Do not think after midnight

I gave the voices your tongue to hear their words in the voice of another. How differently I hate myself when the recital of criticism takes on a separate tone. The ex-plosives are missed as your snipes detonate in an uglier timbre. The richness of that trill is taken as an ever renewing esteem tithe, gradually depreciating my self-belief’s valuations so the bare bones can be given back to the earth cost free. Would the words you made me delete have made any difference? They’ll greet me when I finally give into the bitterness and momentarily regret all I hadn’t the chance to regret before.
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Tar Kiss

I can stare you dead in the eye
But only my hands are fixed in Jute.
I play no longer as your equal
In this demarcated, lonely space,
But as your possession, obsessed.
Today the lungs ferment a tartness
That you’d planted years ago,
But as I cough up curdled astringent
So it may salve your wounds,
I renounce my previous control
And embrace your oblivion invitation.