You came in close, like a moth to my skin A wrong little star with a blue-thorn grin I kept a room for you in my ribs Where bad blood settles and soft ache lives You are the bruise on my chest The ink in the hinge where silence rests I try to unname you, you bloom in the try A dark water lily in a paper sky And the more I fold you away The more you unfold in the seam Like a needle of dusk in my day Like a dream with teeth in its dream You won’t die away You won’t die away Salt in the velvet, still there, still there You won’t die away You won’t die away A thorn in my pulse, a prayer in the snare I’ve lit every lantern of reason and route Still you move through the rooms when hours go out Not a ghost, not a fire, not a name I can shake More like a tide in a basin that won’t break You are the ache in the ivory comb The moon-pale moth in the coal of my home I bite down on morning, it tastes like your hand A far-off harbor in a flooded land And I know you were never mine Still your shadow learns my shape Like a stain from wine that years can’t dry Like a key that can’t find its gate You won’t die away You won’t die away Salt in the velvet, still there, still there You won’t die away You won’t die away A thorn in my pulse, a prayer in the snare If I were ash, you’d be the weather in it If I were bone, you’d be the bell in the marrow We were built like two unsent letters Kissed by the same narrow arrow So I let you live where the dark keeps company In the old glass, in the split seam, in the afters of me Not a wound I can close Just a bloom that won’t close You won’t die away You won’t die away Salt in the velvet, still there, still there You won’t die away You won’t die away A thorn in my pulse, a prayer in the snare You won’t die away You won’t die away I bury you deep, you rise like a flare
