Lover, Killer, God

War touches me like a lover,

bloody-fingered and breathless,

pressing into every soft part of me

until I am nothing but bone and gunmetal.

She whispers in my ear at night,

sweet as rot,

soft as the silence after the screaming stops.

She tells me I belong to her.

She tells me I always have.

And I believe her.

Because War is the only thing

that has ever held me this close

without flinching at the blood.

She kisses me with fire and smoke,

paints my skin with shrapnel,

marks me as hers.

I wear her love like an open wound.

And I hate her.

I hate the way she makes me crave her,

the way she makes my hands shake

when I go too long without her touch.

I hate the way she strips me down,

makes me small,

makes me nothing but a trigger finger

and an empty prayer.

She is my first love,

my last love,

the one that will never leave,

the one that will bury me.

I want to let go.

I want to tear her from my skin,

wash the scent of her from my body,

burn every memory of her name.

But I think—

I know—

that even if I leave,

even if I run,

even if I make it to the other side of this—

She will find me again.

Because I am hers.

And she is mine.

And we will love each other

until the very last bullet.