what do my eyes look like
when you pour every thing you’d never say
if I wasn’t there to listen
into Between My Head?
can you see yourself collecting
in pools behind my lids;
or do you think you pass like air
between my ears?
let me assure you:
you collect.
The most admirable thing about monsters
is the blood dripping down their chin.
How pleasant it would be to hold life
so tightly between my teeth,
snapping each day between my lips:
spitting out the bones, but swallowing the skin.
I thought I was at the end when I decided I wanted
to fuck you, in a way that was hard, harder than
I’ve ever been
tearing you open to get to the pearl or the soft
red, gushing center. I wanted to get to where you bled,
where my fingers could sink in and take hold.
I wanted to pinch until the peach became white,
and then watch it heal. I might have wanted to hurt you
but it was different then.
You were so cruel at the beginning, your smirk would light me on
fire. You were always knowing the answers. I was relieved when
my jealousy came to a rolling boil, because I knew then I could own you—
or the parts of you I always wanted.
I can’t look into your eyes now without fear of recognition,
fear you’ll see the parts of me that denied how soft your insides are.
Up close, now, I can see the veins: and they are covered with skin.
That desire to fuck meaning destroy, when all along your hard shell
was something that cannot crack—only bend.
I think the man who made clocks,
or God, had it wrong when he made time a circle.
Time is not a line, either, and time is not space.
Time is the hair on your head and the tiny links in your mind
that connect everything you ever said
to me, and mine. Time is the empty; Time is the Filled.
Every time I look your name up in a phone book,
or a book of name meanings, it sits so still-
foreign in the curves or straight-down of each letter,
forming to the end until it sits. Your name does not fit you,
unless you are standing in front of me.
Apart from the present, (in my mind), you do not fit.
On paper, you do not match. It is only when Time wraps
its empty fingers around your wrist and pulls you into view- here.
This is where you fit.
They call it quiver because an archer is supposed to hesitate
before he shoots. Arrows, fresh or trusted, are works of art,
crafted, and exist in their own right. You, too,
exist in your own right, and are scared before you shoot.
We all are.
They call it quiver because an archer reaches down and
the arrow shakes. Even with grave practice, and the steadiest
of hands, the arrow will shake for its life sake. You, too,
can’t help but twitch, as the mercury-taste fills your throat and
you swallow.
They call it quiver because that’s what it is. The tension between
before and now, after, what have we done? The hand feeds you,
holds the apples, but can also make you starve. And you, too,
feel the strain, of pulling back, as you draw the bow, and
take your aim.
when you put your hand on the table
i could feel your pulse
through the wood.
i closed my eyes then,
imagined crawling and pressing
my ear to your chest
to hear your heart beat,
to feel your heart. opening,
i reached out to your shirt.
but i could never bear to touch.
