the very first thing he ever said was – i want you
to inch out the splinters i have sharpened into ribs
within the tilde of my anatomy. i want you to help
me unweave this glass wool warp of my epiphanies
my sordid language of a childhood repeatedly
split by tines of forks murking any appetite to survive
i am warning you – i combust, easily – so teach me
how to thicken sand over this tinderbox of trauma
tell me when is it going to be happy again – the libran
birthstone of his eyes glazed by a vigil of seasonal flu
we have waited, haven’t we? – my voice is darkening
into a wet plum. & here is the secret grinning its gift
as the diary blinks its 77 items counted between kef &
kink. together, we torque & tease the edge of this fernweh
i have been another’s anais & i no longer believe
in trite mimicries of dust-glutted mythologies
it is sometimes hard to understand how
to hold something so soft & wild
to watch him redden the sky – a burning
match thrown right into the mouth of morning
where his skin is an arctic fox goldbricked
in the manger of a russian wintergray
is percussed sakura coupling
with the tokyo snow; handprints
hushed over a boudoir grand piano
the octaves jumping out like indus river
dolphins. if he says my body is beautiful
like a rubato of waves – fluting & crescendos
then i am nomadic as a shepherd on the seif
dunes of his stomach; gibbous & silvered
he is the only one who can bury me
within the lunar arias of his own
tinseled bones. the world is wind
chewing out the shrubs in the grunt
of natterjack toads. inside this room
my brain is no longer a black box
hunted from the flotsam of a migraine’s
crashed engine, no longer a solitary wing
protruding like a half-grown tumor
inside this room, we are amoebic in
our singularity. the heave of shapelessness,
blunted flanks – bourbon & muslin
the orgasm rising from me
like the white horse of butoh
his bite untangling these needle-tooth
nerves. handprints seeded against
the hotbed of hips. this is where he began,
this home sparkling its hunger inside
the christmas lights. he brought me here
to translate its possession; to make new
shadows from old ghosts. to unlaw the heart
and celebrate its tandem & cult; its leashless
way of existing between gone & given.
Image by davide ragusa