7 Layers

Luke De-Sciscio

Compositor: Luke De-Sciscio

I didn't have to look
I traced their gestures through your eyes
The room was lit so brightly
That your pupils shrank in size

One cut for every layer
Of the life you'll leave behind
As they partitioned the membrane
To extract the life inside

That's one cut for sloth
That you're laying by my side
Every day beholden
Only to a lover's rise

Long mornings in your arms
Meandering insights
Some wordless, some breathless
Some at the same time

A second slice for gluttony
Now you're laying in your blood
They're digging through our past
To lift new engines from the hood

We wanted more than what we had
You wear it like a smile
Smiling by your side
To try and mask the pain a while

A little sting for pride
Whilst they prise it from the wound
How quick we learnd humility
In the cacophony of you

Anything we think we knew
We know we were blind
The world around you's blurry
My hearts on my outsides

And let the blood be forceful
As it claws around my lust
Before you there was another
But my timing was all rushed

I've thought about it more
In the two weeks since you were born
Than every day and night combined
In the years since you were scorned

So let the blood be forceful
As it coils around my lust
If I have to learn its sacred
Know if I couldn't have I would
One day you will be young
One day you will be young

The incisor bites for bath
An inch we needn't cut
I already spent my wrath
The night you opened up

But now my blood is thickened
In a pool around your feet
I drown with all our ghosts here
And each one bleeds for me

Did you need someone unchained
To remind you that you're free
Every drip to you
The whole length of the stream

I couldn't mastermind it
It all just seems to flow
So I was just the seed
From which another grows

How much more blood to give
As I'm kneeling at your side
I just wanted to see
You and I with a child

So if we call that greed
At least parentheses with love
At least let it be known
It's more than I've been dreaming of

As we broach the seventh layer
And she's lifted from the womb
Your skin still white and trembling
As they laid her there on you

A river for a moment
At the end of both our lines
You and I conjoined in her
And you and I intwined her

And all my deadly sins
Every mistep through the fire
Every light I vanquished
Or kept hidden or denied

They're staring back at me
Beneath the surgery lights
Magic
My baby
Both my ladies are alive