Between dusk’s silk hush,
cobalt’s bruised baptism,
your name lingers—
citrus ruin, cataclysm curling honeyed
beneath tongue,
marrow of memory I can’t swallow.
Mouth pressed to night’s carotid,
drunk on pulse of unsaid things,
but stars—gluttoned, devoured,
marrow siphoned into
opulent throat of nothingness,
galaxy fasting on itself.
Breath—once dialect of embers,
molten psalms unraveling between ribs,
but silence has learned anatomy,
nests in mouth,
cathedral of unsung requiems,
elegy blistering at roots of tongue.
Trained to kneel,
choke on absence,
sacrament for the starved.
Somewhere, time folds into vesper,
curls bitten lip,
hymn chewed to vowels,
and I—ghost of unfinished sentence,
ruin waiting for eclipse of mouth
bold enough to pronounce me.
For R.