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C.N.P Poetry 

Writer's pictureCathexis Northwest Press

His Name; The First Time I Asked Someone To Kill Me; My Therapist Suggests Lexapro

By: Anthony Aguero


His Name


So I asked him to come over.

I had been reading all day and

Crying because none of the pages

Said his name. His name which

Would have my name falling from

His lips like water from a delicate

Fountain. His name retracted from

History. His name I would repeat

Approximately five times, the last

Time while I’m brewing coffee

Alone. His name the sound of

Pages turning from my favorite

Book of poems, which I tell him

Is a secret. His name, something

I have devalued my body over.

His name without intruding sleep.

His name I split between my

Teeth. His name bound with

Honey and cellophane.

His name slipped into my tea.

His name losing value.

His name against my tongue

When I am mouthing an elegy.

His name in the act of restraint

His name the sound of wet leather

Against my skin. His name and

How it falls through your hands

Like picking up bathwater. His

Name with light passing through it.

His name. His name. His name.

His name somebody already killed.

So he is on his way and I cannot

Remember his name.






The First Time I Asked Someone To Kill Me


A body of humans manufactured the sharpest

object known to mankind: the tungsten needle.

An adult body contains billions, billions, and

billions of atoms. The whittling down to a

single-atom tip. And I am in someone’s bed

attempting to get out. But, first, ordering the

Uber. Then how to mention I am about to leave

Sorry, the car is here. You’re so sweet.

Is that blood running down your nose? Bye.

Let’s say nobody invents the tungsten needle.

Let’s say his body was the sharpest object

known to mankind and I was suffering under it.

Or, better, I am the creator of this entire mess.

Because I wanted to touch his eyes and feel

everything he has ever seen.

Because I wanted the humiliation to be palpable

enough that the spit wasn’t just spit but

some declaration of love and an atom being split.

That this sort of dying wasn’t my body

reaching out to someone for nothing.





My Therapist Suggests Lexapro


I wanted to be a better writer

so I shoved the bark of a tree

inside my wrists

and I wrote.


So the bark is inside my wrists

and I was thinking of happiness


against the sound

the medication made.


The medication shouldn’t have

to sound like happiness –

they did.

They did, and one day


I was stripping bark from a

lone tree. My wrists bled


so I wrote, and

all of that music.





 

Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared in the Bangalore Review, 2River View, The Temz Review, and The Acentos Review.

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