my body is a vault
steel bars ribs bared
lungs press against hot bone
your name a password
encrypted
on every vein and even
my muscles remember
every depression in your thumbprint
but even that isn’t enough
to unlock
what builds within me.

hands wring
cold sweat,
dry tongue runs
along teeth
each lap a question,
an anxiety
to tell you,
softly, my thoughts.
should lovers swim
such a wide chasm
of thought? finger tips
barely brush the abyss
but then I think
about the prophet
palms clammy
feverish reciting
each word of his explanation
wondering if even his wife
would think him mad.
perhaps stressed divides
can still be bridges.

I dreamt of draupadi,
birthed by fire
foot on black coals
smoldering
face smothered
soot
an offering vengeance -
mocked, name soiled
a scapegoat for war
because of a purpose
dictated by her father,
for laughter imaged from her lips
a blame only a man or five,
a few producers, even,
can shift to a woman.

I hide
beneath the rock
like a salamander
clings to streamside
stones
once I held one
against my thumb,
on my palm it squirmed
the universe in its veins
and without a word
I returned it home
to moss green and rain-guzzling
grass,
my three-year-old
white Nike’s flooded and cracked
mud seeping through the soles.

you weren’t there
so I went on asking
cards questions
each word a plea
for something else
and in return
each image printed
in monochrome blue
offered an answer
you would have hated,
but each one
sour against my tongue
sounded more honest
than your praise.

sleep tastes
like milk tea and cinnamon,
wind-cooled
for maybe fifteen minutes
drowning in sugar
so that your tongue is sweet and numb.

I used to wonder
why you slept so long
plaid covers up to your nose
pillow imprinted
with your crown.

now I know
that dawn often tastes bitter
and the remains of the day
sticky like pomegranate rot
when dusk arrives
like a cool drink in summer
I can finally slake
this thirst for something different.

knuckles ache
peel back the page:
Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus
cluck the tongue
boys outside throw jabs
over a cracked
cricket bat
a father frets over
investments and client work,
simple things.
I read on
wondering how so many words
committed to tranquility
could be attributed to so many men
when women
trained stoics since the womb
would pen epics -
if only they were not plucking stones from rice.