Something is wrong with me.

--what?

If Mercury was here I would say cosmic

but for now I am stuck with continental.

Heartsick. I feel moon-beaten, like Sylvia.

--how do you know?

Doves with their necks broken, mud pits

full of flies, corn kernels undergrown and callused.

Come with me, I will show you.

--where are we going?

Always back to the water, little sister.

Bring your limestone heart, your coal eyes,

your granite bones. Come with me, I 

will show you.

She said, if this is what peace is

I don't want it, and resumed chewing

her fathers tobacco. The round tin

pressed into her hip, her pockets

flattened against her flat brown body

in the skin tight jeans she wore for you.

They don't even live here, I want to hiss.

They will never know you.

She crosses the bridge with them, plank

by plank sounding under their truck tires,

each thump another movement away from me.

She stays overnight most nights, reappearing

at lunch, smelling of sweat and grass 

and something I can't name, nighttime.

Or she slips silently back into the house

in the dark-dim of predawn, backlit

with lavender and secrets. 

I am a little black spider, she teases me,

crouching in the corners of the rooms.

I call her a wasp and run before she can swat me.

Ink on the sheets, lightning in the sky.

The amber heat of you, stretched smooth and gold

between your shoulders and elbows, elbows and wrists,

wrists to each determined, scarred knuckle.

I cannot pick a battle with you at all.

Ink on my skin, lightning in my mouth,

I entreat you, parlay you, assuage you.

Your ego and I, we conspire against you, we lay traps

you will never see. See how much I need you. See me

collapse inward, dying star, when you leave.

Stellar, cosmic, universal, I twist in the veins of your light,

full of dust and mysterious metal.

The spine of me, iron where there should be fluid, magnets

where cartilage should bend, snaps me

back to your arms quicker than the hiss of the incoming rain.

Ink on your skin, where I drew myself in.

Your fear, in the dark, is low

and rolls deeper than the thunder. I am elated.

I am strong.

You and me and that old Chevelle, the way the trees hung over us, a canopy.

Night and you and me, all of us hiding from streetlights and scenery.

Like if I could only see you, could only smell you, could only taste you

then I might belong to you, and the night, and the heat, and this car.

We are too old for this now, bound up in obligations and money and stress.

I could take you back there but the memories would not make it beautiful.

The streetlights slant in through the blinds, you are not entranced by me.

The cadence of your mouth on my skin, a breathable moment where

Christ and kinship and charity come together as a moment of heat:

blood of my heart, grip of my hands, bless me here

where I stand, arm in arm with you.

Sing hallelujah here under the open sky, praise these landscapes 

with me, these homes we lay ourselves down in, corn and concrete 

and the ache of new growth forests. We are yet young

and neither I nor anyone could predict this moment between us:

crush me to the wholeness of your need, drown me in the river of 

your pain, grow me strong and proud in the soil of your father.

Push with me toward the future, our easterly prize:

see me, taste me, hear me. I am yours, you are mine.

Take me back take me home take me to bed take me

back to myself let me crawl up your skin and into your mouth I will rake

ten half-bit nails across your back when you push into me tell me

I'm beautiful tell me I'm yours tell me you and I are something real

and less perfect and more human than anything I have ever been alone say

you love me while you look me in the eye let me look

at your body beneath me in the sunshine my temple my pool

you bring all the submergence of me to light let me taste 

the truth of us on your tongue

The places you and I choose to fight:

landlocked, hemmed in by concrete and corn.

I have never been so cozened.

You are sugar on my tongue: foliage in my hands, 

an ease in movement, pride and pleasure.

I would rather be tectonic, pyrrhic, 

an embodiment of the violence in my heart.

Silence and sugar mark me here, bruise me, but

heavy tongues demand crying time.

I can hear the doves from my bed. They whisper

pretty secrets, small complaints, bustled up

into your nest with self-important breasts.

I wish for their deaths, for foxes and hawks

to crest the hill in packs and flocks and rip them 

wing from ill-used wing. I pluck mint

and dill and thistle and consider

all the ways I cannot die.

Forty years is not so long.

I bet I could do that time with my eyes closed

and my legs open.

What is freedom? When you call me

Baby 

and wait for me to smile and croon

(I should never 

have sung to you in the first place I should never 

have used my voice at all)

but, strung out, kicking and choking, I 

trust you'll find me here.

Plate and pacify me,

bear me gold and oiled as the centerpiece 

of your traitor table

Else demand service. I rise for you, uncoiled 

at last. 

I will sharpen the knife. 

I light the candles: force my skin to soften

under hot wax and heavy hands. 

You cannot make a human into a home

Somebody should have told you that

You cannot house yourself in the space between his shoulders

You cannot burrow into the cave of his throat and say you are safe

There are no cupped hands large enough to contain the tornado that you are

There is no pale body that can conquer the tectonic motion that is you

You will not sit, aged, on an old couch holding hands

With an old lover watching daytime tv.

You will not sit, middle-aged, in a school or a daycare 

With your partner, sorting out kids needs.

You will not sit, blissed and wet, in a moment of peace

With your boyfriend, soaking up time away from the world.

Oceans do not crave algae.

They simply grow, and roar, and weave

Their own paths across the globe,

Making habitats where they will

And destroying environs that do not suit.

Earthquakes do not seek electricity, but

Decisively digest entire urban blocks 

And light the rest up with downed lines

And swallowed poles, on a whim, at their pleasure,

Without remorse. You are global:

A natural ferocity which cannot be bounded. 

Do not sink to the cravings of lesser beasts.

Without a violent relationship I have no outlet for the rage I feel

Without an uncaring relationship I have no outlet for the ice I create

Without an unstable relationship I have no outlet for the disquiet I feel

Without a substance-dependent relationship I have no recourse for the need I feel 

I dream of you and I

in places neither of us have yet been

in bodies we have not yet built

with history we have not yet lived.

I will love you there, beneath that future sky

I will taste your mouth and bless your tongue and,

under stars that are older than 

the deep tradition of you and I, brighter than 

the burning in my blood for your gaze,

farther away from us now than ever they have been:

there in the dark calm we will find our fears

and conquer them wholly.

somewhere under my sky you perch:

and because I will not leave without you,

my cold air and sullen stars and grinning predators

leave me before dawn gasps its pressure.

inhale here with me, now: what are we

but doves, caught soft and crooning?

your name has its own life

in my mouth, red and heavy and sweet.

when the stars fade I fear I'll lose

my direction but I cling to a faint memory

that the last time the sun rose, your voice

in the distance called me home.