warmed by the sun

Or when I take your hand

A simple, sweet thing

A miracle every time

You ask me why it hurts

and I breathe you in

Ever so slowly, I breathe love in

Hold it for as long as I can

and I say, ask me again

if there is tenderness in love

If there is too much of it

On Being a Muse

I need you—your warmth and despair. I want to be the word that curls around your tongue. The body that curls around your words. Sometimes it feels like a curse to be this intimate with language. To admit I am not the only one you have touched in this way.

My Love

My love calls to me

Says, when will you come back

like you promised all those years ago

When you miss the shoreline of your motherland

When you’ve had the world so many times over

and found it more walls than wonder

My love says I have grown old waiting for you

Don’t you miss me—

not even a little?

Does this not feel like

a kind of slow death

Tell me now before I go on waiting

if I should die waiting for you

Something Back

The moment you look at me will be the end of my life. The second your arms open up for me, everything will fall to dust.

There is no such thing as happiness like this. My lips pressed into your palm. Joy tearing through me like madness. Your tongue drawing circles down my stomach. Nothing this perfect can come from God. It must be borrowed from a place so dark, it would make your skin crawl. It doesn’t come without wanting something back.

The One She Loved

She lived her life hiding from herself

Trading one abuse for another

Weighing every wrong with

a feather and stone

And every man she wanted

Wanted her all to himself

and the one she loved

left her alone

Ten Things

There came a time when you were allowed only ten worldly possessions

Down by my feet, were the things I had chosen

The first was a clock to tell the time. And to feel a heartbeat that was separate to mine

A pencil, eraser, and book of blank pages, words written on sand through all the ages

A spoon and bowl my fifth and sixth, a phantom meal for me to lick

My seventh a cup to catch the rain, to quench my thirst and dull my pain

A pillow in the place of my bed, to rest my head

My ninth, a quilt against the cold, something to hold

And when I was down to one, I couldn’t choose

between a knife and a picture of you

Shame

Is it truly possible to live without shame? If not inflicted by others, then self-imposed?

Some Loves

I think of our love as a door left slightly ajar, like a magnifying glass that my hand must shield from the sun. There are some loves that are soft and gentle like the caress of summer rain and others like wild animals trapped in cages, that will devour us whole if we let them.