i wind you up like so much challah, warm
and fat and heavy i twine you on the kitchen
counters in practiced hands. tonight
your limbs are perfect clockwork, the beat of me
a gravity we both lay ourselves down in.
rise like a girl from her deathbed and dance:
in a desert there is plenty of heat where
we could bake for years. rise like
this is the first beckoning you have followed,
the first you have heard, rise like your blood
does not pace in your veins waiting for
the shepherd to come and find you here.