fairy tale as dystopian love poem & an account of bone breaking | by Kevin Hüttenmüller

fairy tale as dystopian love poem

on the last night on earth we take care
of anything that matters. i pour you

a cup of hot tea and we sit on the couch in front
of the fireplace, wrapped in blankets, hearing

out the silence. not everything makes a sound
like another thing. i ask you if you are

hungry and you tell me to snuggle closer. 
at some point the radio static turns

into a man’s voice, soothing like a needle thread
pulled through a thin sweater. he narrates

your favorite story, the story where the heroine
escapes on her own and does not marry.

i pour you another cup and you snuggle closer.
not everything makes a sound like another

thing. the fireplace takes care of anything
that matters. i ask you if you are hungry

and you tell me please don’t forget me. i pour
you another cup. this is your favorite story.

an account of bone breaking

i cut off my head and that’s how i know the night
is going well. life in the middle of disappointment 
hatches from the egg but you don’t look. there’s 
something else surfacing the spinal cord, an example

of a stone taken from the grave. i want our bodies to live
inside a footnote but the key is wrong. i want the
landscape to swallow up any stillborn nature throws
at us like fledglings. i am useless but i love you. i love

you and i know because i am useless when the artificial
candle lights up half of my face. the other half is
for you. we remember moments by people. i remember
what time of day it is by pinning my body on a stake

and ask for your blessing. your lips dry eventually
but the promise remains intact. it makes no sense to
love the distance but the angels hold you close to me.
too many angels go around and rot and we run the risk

of falling into language. i wish you liked me more.
i wish the stone would turn itself in and confess the
necessary numbers. days i love, days i love you. everything
is binary when we carve hunger from the oracle, when

we watch silence take its first step around the kitchen
table. i cry in a language that is not my own. does that not 
make it my own. a seed, a mayflower, a corpse, dreaming on its 
own. let’s kill everything because love might be the wrong word.