you are built into my skin,
but my love for you is not chemical, it is not
godly, divine
for we are godly, divine enough for love
if we so choose
and we so choose.
so come back into my arms and we will
dance a million dances
and watch as we come apart in each other’s arms
like hurricanes uncurling and leaving only rain.
you and i are storms with no eyes
so when we touch we are lightning-alive and flash-thunder
boom
i can feel the humming of barometers in my bones
and you can feel the pressure rising in our hearts
but our love is not chemical
it is heat-seeking, face-flushing, dancing
like oven bricks leaving dust like stars
across a sky of skin
because we so choose.

why do the poems about feeling razors cut deep into skin
get reactions
while the poems about beauty and love
get none?
is it because we know what to say when we feel the other hurting hands
hurting at skin that fits too tight and chokes?
or is it because we envy the happy
and secretly wish they weren't happy at all?

tonight is a wrench night, where i spend the dozing hours
tossing and turning
and trying to fix the fact that you're not here.
i build replacements out of pillows and blankets,
but they are not warm enough.
they do not have your hips,
they do not have your smile,
and it breaks my heart.
so i curl up with my wrench
and tell it stories
because you are a world away
building replacements for me.
together, we use the wrenches to plug the holes in our hearts
and we wait out the wrench night.

i am purple-dark wine stuff
the kind of marks that get flash-frozen over white skin
because i am yours and when you drink me in
i get drunk and dizzy and spinny
and stupid as i fall over myself
drooling and grabbing
at the one girl in the room who i have
but i can't have enough of

the closet has our *** noises on wire hangers
not because of the four babies we lost
but because we can never have them
we can never bear pretty pictures
even with all the efforts of our puzzle-making
love-making, puzzle shuffling
because sometimes we get to put the wire hangers on and wear them around like beetle's wings
we are magic
with our four lost babies
and our questionable marriage license
because we still have each other