The Bridge

Ten and twelve make twenty-two.
I am a nursery rhyme you bit right through.
You are a tiny, wet thing living under my tongue,
Sucking the silver out of my lungs.
You told the dinner party I'm a temporary lease,
While you chew on my knuckles for a little bit of peace.

You claim you are starving, you have no one to hold,
So you're using my spine as a mould for your cold.
It's an exquisite circus, the way that you feed -
You swallow my sunlight and spit out your greed.
I am your oxygen, your mother, your ghost,
But the virus is getting too big for the host.

An ocean away, someone's digging up bone.
He's buying a cloud just to call me his own.
He remembers the girl before she was meat,
Before you laid eggs in the arch of her feet.
He is working the dirt till his fingernails bleed,
To harvest the antidote that I need.

And I am the bridge that is starting to crack,
One pulling me forward, one dragging me back.
How absurd to be dying of thirst in the mud,
While drowning in two different kinds of my blood.