It is a pilgrimage to a lesser-known shrine
a whispered vesper to the running salt sea
It is martyrdom the moment your knees sink
to the stone of the altar, all godhead and
holiness spilling from your lips and onto mine.
We are wine-drunk against parched rock,
suspended momentarily in the sliver
of a sunbeam, our mingled breaths
cradled in a sunken half-moon,
all sage and smoke and salt,
an offering to a lesser-known god.

the last of the September apples,
molded and sunken in the dirt
plucked from the earth by
fat small hands,
she fingers the loose brown skin
and, grotesquely, it gives way,
its wrinkled and rotting face
shrinking from the sun.

in the caustic brine
the fish excavate my flesh
until i am nothing
but clean white bone
yet, undone as i am,
all at once the quiet lull
makes me whole again.

When we go out
I wear cheap vanilla perfume and a push-up bra
We sit in the back of your car
And I let you put your tongue in my mouth, your fingers,
your hands around my throat
I know you think there’s a natural order to these things
But you won’t say it to me out loud
You just get on top of me and pin me down
And I wonder why my sick little mind likes it.

At dinner,
I give her my peppers
she gives me her celery,
and this is how we say I love you.

We swam in moonlight,
liquid and effusive,
basking in the twilight bliss
tasting the honey and kisses
that drip so willingly from the lips
of new lovers.

There is a thrill in living
in a universe that starts and ends
in the space between your body and mine
two binary stars orbiting one another in a dance,
volatile and overconfident,
undeterred by the fate
gravity has in store for us.
and the heat death of our little universe
comes fast
rather than slow
abruptly, though not altogether unexpectedly,
we have reached absolute zero.
now here we are
two dead stars
in an infinite expanse,
the last victims
of empyreal and perverted entropy.