from the outside looking in, the skin over your veins looks papery thin.

I.

The watermelon seeds of doubt
tell me what I really need to know.
You can have me pitted and split open
on a Styrofoam plate, because the pink
insides always seem to be appealing
after a few drinks at a barbeque on
Independence Day.

Pitted, gutted. It’s all the same
when you’re splayed and incriminating yourself
without even understanding your own chalk outline.

II.

They said you were beautiful once
when you reminded them of Original Sin.
No compulsion. You were a wildfire
set ablaze and eating everything alive
with your flames.

Your eyes were bottomless
black as charred homes and swollen rivers.

III.

I wanted to write this for you
and for your blue veins like tree branches
growing on your arms and raised like a bas relief –
you were once beautiful but now you are dust.

What is left of you is preserved
in old photographs but they could never
quite capture the bottomless pits of your eyes
as dark as watermelon seeds on a summer day.

Your Catholic guilt was a camera
and your veins were a timeline.