Lady Love licks her lips,

the breeze of an unbirthed spring in her sigh,

and kisses my fingertips with a knife handle.

She drags my exhausted, consenting gaze to hers.

“Are you ready to court me?”

she purrs through honey-dripping fangs.

Her eyes trace the serrated kisses she left on my wrists.

The scabs itch insistently,

flaking and peeling and bleeding.

My lips part to answer,

I pause,

A glacial crack breaks my ribs and

I choke

up a gurgle of frozen blood as ice slices my gullet.

Her lilac talons close my numbing fingers around the knife

and her stainless steel lips pout.

“Pledge your self” she moans,

her mouth the borderline between repulsion and rapture

where I surrender;

carving my answer in letters of raw, pink flesh.

Lady Love binds my wounds in a tourniquet

and licks my blood from her lips.

“Are you ready to try again, my love?”