November 1, 2023 – Chariot
She sews herself into a tiny room. She melts, ignoring her hunger.
Determined, she wants change, to be like heaven, to reshape her body in flight and be free from dirtying herself by crawling again.
She sews herself into a tiny room. She melts, ignoring her hunger.
Determined, she wants change, to be like heaven, to reshape her body in flight and be free from dirtying herself by crawling again.
She is wispy and worn, strangling me with smoke from down inside her
I see her, briefly touch her lips, and she explodes inside my stomach, birthing a thousand butterflies with fiery wings
for Vitali
I did not know you well enough to write about your death, how they found you dressed in black, sleek in your scuba suit in the Florida fall, drifting like the plankton do
This ribcage holds panic surrounding the ghost of a man still alive outside my body
I want to claw his back bloody while I kiss his throat, bite his tongue have him bathing in both our sweat
I stop myself, I need sleep I need him but I want him too our hands meet but miss
build me up like a funeral pyre, burn the skeletons brighten the night until the sun rises again and I am gone
in a tiny rainstorm in a dark room, midnight, we dance around each other, two touching phantoms
a little bit of salt, the slightest of weight
There is no God but the darkness of him crashing into me
I live to smear dirt from my filthy face
onto his cheek, down his chest.
Rain is dripping, slipping onto my thighs,
where I'll baptize him everywhere on his skin, slow but all at once.
I suck my fingernails where an ex-lover left his wet skin.
It’s after midnight, I taste him.
I think of him holding my hands down, staring into my eyes as if he were watching the sky exploding.
His eyes bloomed, his hands tightened around mine, pushing them up above my head.
Quiet animals in a dark room, silencing each other with tongues slipping past sighing lips.
On the 11th anniversary of my mother's death, this one is dedicated to her
It’s the tiny things you remember when someone meets death and leaves,
how she was a wildflower, a poppy at the roadside and distant in certain seasons.
My nomadic mother, dancing from desert to desert. Sometimes she had children. Sometimes that place stood empty.
I cling to her reflection like mine, sharp and fractured, sometimes beautiful in its brokenness.
Until I meet death too, She will greet me from the bunches of poppies swaying in the desert.
I wish I had more than two hands to touch you everywhere at once
dip your fingers into my starving mouth push your fingers down my waiting throat
use your hands to form praying hands with mine to me, our hands are gods
consumed i will expire in the air he breathes
condensation in the night as i dance and i sigh