Nothing But Color

for Yukio Mishima

I didn’t write Etsuko,

I sliced her open.

She was carmine inside

like a sea bass

and empty.

No viscera, nothing but color.

I love you like that, boy.

I pull the kimono down around your shoulders

and kiss you.

Then you let it fall open.

Each time, I cut you a little

and when you leave, I take the piece,

broil it, dip it in ginger sauce

and eat it. It burns my mouth so.

You laugh, holding me belly-down

with your body.

So much hurting to get to this moment,

when I’m beneath you,

wanting it to go on and to end.

At midnight, you say see you tonight

and I answer there won’t be any tonight,

but you just smile, swing your sweater

over your head and tie the sleeves around your neck.

I hear you whistling long after you disappear

down the subway steps,

as I walk back home, my whole body tingling.

I undress

and put the bronze sword on my desk

beside the crumpled sheet of rice paper.

I smooth it open

and read its single sentence:

I meant to do it.

No. It should be common and feminine

like I can’t go on sharing him,

or something to imply that.

Or the truth:

that I saw in myself

the five signs of the decay of the angel

and you were holding on, watching and free,

that I decided to go out

with the pungent odor

of this cold and consuming passion in my nose: death.

Now, I’ve said it. That vulgar word

that drags us down to the worms, sightless, predestined.

Goddamn you, boy.

Nothing I said mattered to you;

that bullshit about Etsuko or about killing myself.

I tear the note, then burn it.

The alarm clock goes off. 5:45 A.M.

I take the sword and walk into the garden.

I look up. The sun, the moon,

two round teeth rock together

and the light of one chews up the other.

I stab myself in the belly,

wait, then stab myself again. Again.

It’s snowing. I’ll turn to ice,

but I’ll burn anyone who touches me.

I start pulling my guts out,

those red silk cords,

spiraling skyward,

and I’m climbing them

past the moon and the sun,

past darkness

into white.

I mean to live.

Source: Vice: New and Selected Poems (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1999)