I’ll have to live with you in my mind for a while

like a man condemned to death with a man condemned to life,
waiting for each other to lose our minds
and trade places—so you could slip into my death
and I could taste your life.
only it won’t happen. I accept my leaving, my disappearance,
I accept the greatest loneliness in the world,
as if your tower were taller than the prison yard,
taller than an eclipse, and I will always stand in darkness,
in your shadow. I accept the noise in my knees, that buzzing
before pain, before the legs are cut away.
I accept the whip of veins that throws me down
when my eyelids claw desperately at the earth—
not a grave, not a bunker, only a place
where you can piss a tear without it being seen,
a place where you lay down your soul before the guillotine,
a place through which you can see hell
as it turns its gaze on you.