(explicit)

**** my soul
        with poetry
           scream out my gracious name
             slay me with words
               that peel my layers
                and simultaneously
                                   drive me
                                           insane

finger me slowly, hotly
with just the right rhythm and rhyme
    push me past my
                 tender limits
                       into tongues of syntax,
                                                      sublime

a­lliterate my senses
   (in swift stac
                    c-at
                           o)
until my mind is but blank verse
    mess up my stressed
              and unstressed syllables
in unsung language, versed

I will speak to you in vowels
(the only sound
       I will be able to make)
as you stroke
   my iambic pentameter
             in the heat of frothed-up
                                                     ache

we are this heroic couplet, you see
        even if the meaning seems veiled
           no need for simile or metaphor
               as I feel your chest rise
                              in deep inhale

we are a natural paradox
       so many ironies abound
         discordant harmony
is our synaesthesia
     in visible darkness found

and I love this delicious enjambment
as your aura invisibly slips
                               into mine
our lines have no beginning,
                                 no end
    as we undo
          the boundaries
                      of time

You hear the knock at the door
and your breath goes silent
everything is still and you can feel your heart in your chest
and then
overdrive
your breathing, soft,
an unruly curl you have brushed and yanked and mangled into submission
lies to him
and pretends your heart isn’t about to rip a hole through your chest
and that your hands aren’t shaking with the threat
of another person in your safe space
another person in the place you have finally carved out
a space in which to feel soft
and without apologies
you pretend you aren’t about to fall apart
and you step up
out of your home
and into your house
and you open the door

you wanted me
I adored you
hands around legs
and
me wrapped up
in you

I adored you
you wanted me
bitten off words
unfinished caresses
and
a hand wrapped
around my throat

to hold
to own
and to destroy