With doubt and self hate as continually in bloom in my skin I need
the pressure of your hands to keep it at bay
where words or daylight promises fade out into the loneliness of night
I might forget the drive of your desire,
if you left me here without reminders. when in the highest vaults of night
I feel your hips push toward mine, feel
the breath of you like grace on my skin, you are the dissolution of my
doubts and all my fears. Touch me now
like you could heal me, drag me out of the swamp I have dredged with
brackish self-loathing, pry me sticky
with contempt up into your arms: where I am whole, or seen, or loud, and
where I never doubt the truth of your hands and mouth.

I am worldbuilding in the roof of your mouth, cozened up
between the moon and the taste of your tongue.
In ochre waves we wash each other's hearts, hands tempered
by the faultlines and flaws we know we bear. In this midnight
you are pure, a sluice of hot blood through an empty vein.
Dear heart, under my gaze you are blameless, a salt
and stillwater dream of all the ways we will heal.

grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
and the penance that will let me make it up to you.
grant me the peace of standing still in your heart
and the lurking fears that keep me eager, restless, pacing to prove myself.
where I am tired let me become strong, the fiercest champion
of your heart and your body and soul. where I am blind
let me see all the ways you bless me. where I would go silent
lead me in song, let me show you the wholeness of my voice.

He said take photos for me baby show me
I want to see

so
I took them
a series of images that are
my body, the way I experience the world,
my physicality, the being of me

He was confused by the veins
in the crook of my elbow (I like where
the red lines run hard against the blue)
He couldn't make sense of my knuckles, ragged
and bony and shoving up into
such a thin layer of skin
He looked vaguely interested at the pink
of my mouth but what I showed was
the stem of my tongue, the heat
of my throat, a deeply rooted ability
to speak or stay silent

He said these are cool I didn't know
you were one of those art type girls
But you know what I want baby why can't
you just show me

Your name has its own life
in my mouth:
it roosts, heavy and warm, blinking
slowly in the grey then blue morning.
When the stars fade
I fear I'll lose you, I fear
the lapse of nocturnal desire, I am sure
you will leave me someday, but
this morning I cling
to a faint pink hope that the last time
the sun rose, your voice
in the distance called me home.

I daydream 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

Under stars that are older than
the stellar hope of us, brighter than
the burning in my blood for your gaze,
there in the dark calm we will find our fears
and conquer them wholly

Such safety in being unseen
I have been so visible and so unknown

I have been a pillar of clouds:
A signal, a leading, directionality and hard work
I have been a pillar of clouds in the sky
Over a desert with no rain
And I have not fallen

You find me now, crowded
Along my edges with unsung desires,
Full up of fitful dreamings:
Oh catch me crass and crestless and tell me
That I can be yours

Know me here in the trenches of the world
Dark red ridges where you and I
Could dredge our sins entirely:
Let me put down
The burden of this rain, the weight
Of renewal that it brings.
Know me here where dust is springtime
And fallow land our home. Know me
Here in the red mountains,
And take me back to the lakeshore
Where I have always belonged and never been.

You find me now, a pillar of salt
Shredded with grief. Anchor, grounding, castaway,
In each other we are beautiful
And I would let you take me home.

your teeth tear everything from me--
leave me shaking, curled like a child seeking shelter
from the green-grey funnels that twist
and scream in the sky-- my voice
a counterpoint for these worldborne furies--
I am worthless, no longer waterbearing, but still
I beg, leave me the land at least-- leave me
the heavy clods of dirt, root clumps
retched up among the worms, I beg you
leave me some earthen bed to cozen
my wounds and whispers in-- leave me at least this
when you leave me aching, bruised and begging.

the angle of my knees opening for you, two long
slow slides of a triangle completed by you:
primal, slick with all the ways I need you.

words in my mouth that have been yours, my skin
a baring of territory that becomes yours,
where every inch is charted and blessed.

here in the dim purity of your white bed perhaps
I could be whole: where your hands and mouth
grid safe paths, perhaps I could find peace.

with gods blessing I find you
out in the world, a pattern, a fence along the horizon:
a manmade calling out for home.
I follow you.
you are the wind between the blades of grass,
the keening of my soul along the plains.

animate hunger drives us both forward
on a curling path past the ledge:
where the sun sets, I find you, take your hand
and drag you over.

Wraith that I am, I slink slowly
over the windowsill, the spillage of me
piling into your bed like detritus
washed up on the lakeshore. I am

unseen, unheard, a catchall of
others' thoughts and deeds: a harsh netting
that leaves a taut patterns on your skin.
Reject me. I am heartless.

I sink my teeth into your thigh:
what pleasure, what dense cacophony
in the red rending of your flesh.
You taste of sin and hunger

and the salt that smothers my bones.
Loose my tongue: pry me up
out of the jagged wounds and let me
feast instead in your honeyed heart.