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I have never heard anyone beg
with such ferocity; let time stop
as it clocked me in the jaw
with your inner thigh as if the tongues
I were speaking were emancipatory

but our lingua franca was constructed
from the only universal human sounds
left to the constrained; halted my muse
from crossing over into coherence; exited my throat
proclaiming the arrival of false demi-gods

so I trailed my tongue across
your black-hole pupils as if butterfly kisses
could patch up the rift between us
after we fucked

“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”