In the beginning

(Which is to say, after the end)

I try not to say it;

I try to keep the words closer than skin,

Covered up like stretch marks and cellulite

And other ugly markers of age and gender and sex.

After the end, or in the beginning,

I focus on how full I feel,

Stockpiled and shored up against the coming freeze

When I cannot feel the heat of you

Or taste the salt of your body.

I focus on progress, on continued happiness,

On the machinations of daily movements so that 

I will just keep plodding, easily, into the future

And towards the end, or the next beginning. 

Am I home? Am I lost? I am 

Perpetually unsure, drunk on location, dazed

By the multiplicity of homelessness.

So at this end of time, looking forward into

My next ending, I think only of the closeness

Of the memories, the immediacy with which I can

Call you to mind, your mouth, your words, your eyes.

I think of these and call you home

And wait for my next beginning. 

over a hot mug of coffee, cupped in both hands
the smell inhaled more than the dark brew sipped at

over a blue formica tabletop, silver pedestal, tiled floor
sticky with food leavings and cigarette ash

over a worn-smooth wedding ring, two generations old
and the only jewelry she wears any more

over a rib cage rising and falling gently
tide upon tide, she tells me

the wrongness spreads through her body,
platelets that break more than they build

they're measuring her in months now
a few dozen weeks with a few dozen prescriptions

while my heart's rupture, the crack of it
might be audible, i know she doesn't want me to cry

in public so i don't, till she adds
she thinks she's too tired to be in love any more

I want a life full of words, written and spoken
And meant with the whole heart,
The honesty of affection and anger and love.

I want a life of dancing, of rhythm and movement,
Of motion and syncopation and the language
Your body speaks with mine.

I want a musical life, a symphony of sound,
Dense with harmony and
The delicate interweaving of multiple lines.

I want a life of color and shape, clarity, obscurity,
An artist's perspective of the scene
And the circumstance of you and i.

things we do to each other

once i told you that you are beautiful.
i have seen you, open and willing, tied breathless
to a future you were scared of;

inside the dim white walls you are confident,
maybe, or just lying, who can say? but i am willing
to follow you there;

i have stolen your siblings,
i have usurped your husband,
i have sung songs to your children,
i have lived inside your skin
and found it beautiful;

in my kleptomania i am still attached:
i desire you, desire the heat and the wet of you,
daydream about your skin and your mouth;

because i think this is what masculinity is, selfish,
worth disavowing servitude for: ownership through
whatever means. but i am female: i will win

and will give back. i do not need to keep
what i have taken. come back to bed, find yourself
under my hands, let me tell you what you are.

detritus

postcards from two years ago
fixed to the fridge with magnets (again,
and every time I move)
shoes with holes worn through under the kitchen table
nubbed pencils like beaks, carousing in the bottom of the junk drawer
a painting I did while drunk, the teal stumbling against the red underneath the black-
it was supposed to be a daisy