You deserve a poem,
handwritten in red,
made with bloodied fingertips—
a small impression of the heart
as it beats desperately.

Maybe when you read it,
you should eat it,
to feel the sensation
of swallowing me whole
and tasting my feelings.

This madness makes you sick.

Nausea.

And then, in complete delirium,
vomiting my sonnets,
nourishing the soil of a graveyard,
you will realize that I am gone.

Your sadness fertilizes me.
A black orchid will grow.
It’s a posthumous flower
that I still give you.

Photo Vanessa Redgrave as Isadora Duncan by Norman Parkinson.