Sanguine

By Fawzi Asraf

I ought to be, in my despair.
I ought to look forward.
I ought to feel enough.
I ought to be that too.
Love surrounds me, but I crave it too much.
I press my face against the glass, fogging up all the beauty I desperately crave.
Brilliance explodes out of me, but it burns and it scorches and I scream through the splendor.
I’m frantic and I claw, I clutch, I rake, I hold too tight— until joy fractures and dies and crumbles to ash and dust and nothing in my hands.
Sanguine.
I ought to be but I only find despair.
Sanguine.
It flows through my veins, sanguine as the blood I bear.
Sanguine.
It’s burnt away and left for dead and there is now nothing there.
Sanguine.
Rejection and desperation kicked the doors down, gnashed their teeth and ripped the sanguine from everywhere.
Sanguine.
I spiral into a fantasy where the sanguine I want slips out of the slits to soak into my sheets and dampen out the screech.
Sanguine.
I work on it constantly, I calm myself down, and when I can’t, I find a friend or a phone call or a bottle or a beer or a pill or a powder or another man or a night of danger to fill the silence in the air.
Sanguine.
Oh how I missed the metals in your tastes and the heaviness in your scent and the pleasure that always follows the agony of your touch.
Sanguine. 
You were my best friend and I loved you and we broke and it was done and there’s really not much left to say.
Sanguine.
You were someone I met and we had an incredible time and I don’t know if it’ll stick but I’m hopeful and I despair.
Sanguine.
I miss you.
Sanguine.
I wish I was with you.
Sanguine.
How do we end it?
Sanguine.
I don’t know that we do.
Sanguine.
Maybe I’ll think of something
Sanguine
Something to do
Something to be
Someone with you
Something, someone, anyone, anything, anything, anything, ANYTHING
to bring you back.
Sanguine.
I miss you.
Sanguine.
Come back.
Sanguine.
We ought to be one
We ought to be together
We ought to be hopeful
That’s what you are
You are hope
You are hope in the darkest days
You are hope when hope is locked up and dying
Hope is an evil, hope is not pleasant.
Hope keeps you stuck.
Hope keeps you present.
Hope drags you back.
Hope pins you down.
Hope is pain.
Hope is horror.
Hope is despair.
I despair.
Sanguine.
Where are you?
S A N G U I N E !
You’re not there.

Fawzi is a queer Palestinian writer and poet based in Sheffield, UK. You can follow him, his activism and his work on Instagram (@fuzzdfuzz)