Look at this, I made for you,
with lungs and fingertips

I've painted the whole of me,
but you've always seen less.

I must have been afraid.
See how my knuckles trembled
to create something so large,
a human soul could fill it?

Don't look at it,
I'm bare.
See my face
in every stroke?

I'd rather turn from you
and quit this sick indulgence
but you must have always known
you'd claim this ruptured soul.

So I have given this nothing reason,

as I gave your darkness color,

and I have given this paint a purpose,

as I gave myself to you.

Your eye
is the single thing.

I will fill it
with summer weeds
little stalks
no wrinkles
weighed with rain, like lungs of June.

I will fill it
with the hush of grass
swollen
with sun
your quiet lips like prayers, on my tongue.

You must never meet
puckered soil
wasted stems
no sickness
in this summer age.

Your eye will never fill
with these
trembling
wringing hands--
this ceiling without a star.

I will care for you.

I remember very little.

A hug of tweed
a porcelain sparrow.

Everything burns like a cigarette,
but you tasted better.

Lit by sparks, debris in flame,
I could not meet his eye.

Your gaze was coal along my spine

burning me alive.

We swayed on lukewarm asphalt
futures scribed across the sky

I closed my eyes against the night

And felt your footsteps shift with mine.

I arched my back against your breath
you rasped, "can I cut in?"

Your lips against my lobe

left me taught and thin.

The glow of sparse-lit flares
your fingers worked against my skin

a desperate moan escaped me

at my gasp you flushed and grinned.

Knuckles clenched along my hip
bare feet weak on a damp road

the bodies parted, our gaze persisted,

swallowed pain and my eyes closed.


Because you are not mine

I am not yours

we had one night,


and yet no cure.