the lines of your body long and lit
soft in the first rays of the day: i reach for 
the warm weight of you, the rise and fall,
ballast of my own ability to get still.
i have never deserved mornings like these.

i have had to develop my own toxicity
in order to remain a predator not prey, and every
poison and vice and sin and trick
on which my freedom relies is too visible,
too easily tasted on my mouth and cunt.
i owe too many debts, culled too much damage
out of the world we wake to now.
too many months lived outside my body,
kite lashed hard against someone else's suicide.
too many months spent quiet, hard, static.
i am too strong to break, too smart to fail, except
at my own hands, the true cost of escape. 

for you something inside of me grovels, wet,
an instinct doused in fear and shame.
i want to bleed. i want to crawl. i want
the pressure of your teeth on my skin.
i want to be measured and found wanting, be seen
and be silenced. take me home.