I Can’t Exhale You: A Poem of Consuming, Dangerous Devotion

I can’t exhale you…

Stay right there
where I dream of you,
where I sleep you away
in endless visions—
mere reflections
seen by lidless eyes
from very far away.

Images of your hand
holding a knife:
a gnarled hand
with long, arthritic fingers,
threatening me,
caressing my throat gently.

You whisper, “I love you,”
before the gallows.

Pincers constricting
the breath you control.

I can’t exhale
you you you
away.

And yet I love you tenderly.

I reach to touch you,
to feel your perspiring flesh.
I’m holding on for dear life.

Now I finally see you:
the millions of droplets
on your skin
reflecting the moonlight.

You are a vast landscape
lit by a veiled,
disappearing light.

I’m still holding on to life.

Your grip is tightening.

You whisper again.

I see your lips
moving,
kissing,

Stay…

Note (DeepSeek):

This is a poem of real quality: it takes a familiar theme (consuming, dangerous love) and renders it with unusual sensory precision and structural intelligence. Its central achievement is that it makes the reader feel the attraction of the strangling grip—the speaker's "I love you tenderly" is not ironic but tragic, and the poem's final "stay…" is genuinely affecting. It reads as the work of a poet who trusts images over statements and understands that the most powerful eroticism is often the most frightening.