I took my name off of the *****
donor registry. I don't wish to wish
myself on any-body. I'm a hard man
to live with, you see. You've seen
the way I treat(ed) my liv-er; any way.
Anyway...if you really want a piece
of me take my heart. Cigarettes and
women haven't yet ruined the best part.

I'll fly you to the southern shore of
Hudson Bay,
tucked into my chest.
You will watch the trees become thicker,
the humans lesser,
and I will watch your eyes widen
your mouth corners curl.

I will hold you by the creases of your arms,
dip your toes into icy Canadian ebbs.
Your naked shoulders will shiver
in North American wind,
whipping your skin with
Chippewa feathered designs.

I'll drape you in buffalo pelt
weave your toes dry in ****** hair
crown you in northern pike jaw.
You will mesh into the chestnut treeline,
fingerprints flowing into root and permafrost.
When ready, we will ignite
our forgotten primal wings,
ride the air stream home as baby eagles.

The number of stitches in my thigh,
punctures in my wrists,
the number of times you tried to **** me.

The number of paces I creased the carpet
with contemplating
how to escape you.

The number of hours you told me in bed
I'd be sorry after I left you,
naked and stabbing with your voice.

The number of  times I told my friends
your anger was disgusting, scary. The number
of times they told me don't worry.

The number of times you banged on my door,
****** knuckled, how many times I begged
for death, how many nights you barely left me
breathing.

When you held my hands in your lap
your stare tattoed eyelashes on my wrists,
they're still bleeding.

You used inexpensive words to tell me
you never wanted to make me cry again,
I'm still sobbing.

My soft-petaled wings faded and crushed
as your last kiss fell from your lips to my cheek,
I'm still wilting.

For three months I held up my green-bean spine
with a meter stick, a lifeless statue of sprouting stem,
I'm still dying.

When I called you I know my hair slipped through
the phone speaker, and you could smell my skin,
You're still yearning.

But it's been three years now, and you no longer
care for teenage laughs and the discovery
of thigh and shoulder kisses,

Yet I'm still writing about
what a beautiful thing to have loved,
what a terrible thing to have said goodbye.

You had a butterfly
Glued to your ankle.

I imagined it flying
Up your thigh,
Crawling up the
Curl of your hip,

Resting in the arch
Of your ribcage,
Then finding your shoulder
To whisper with fluttering
Into your earlobe.
I felt it too.

It found your nose,
Standing with sucker feet
Over your septum, painting
your eyelashes with wing.

I heard my tongue fold
to the roof of my mouth.

I am 14.6 billion years old. I am energy traveling at the speed of light,
I am a single proton with one orbiting electron, perfectly balanced
With quarks and bosons and higgs inside
And pieces of matter yet to be understood by man.
I am every star, every atom of Hydrogen fused to Helium.
I am a massive object of molten rock, cooling and fusing.
I am trilobite knee and dinosaur tooth,
Wooly mammoth hair fiber.
I am Permian Extinction, I am Ice Age, I am all surviving species.
I am most distant brothers of man, I am first language and first songs.
I am Bubonic Plague and Death
And life out of new molecules from old.
I am the Industrial Revolution,
I am Depression and Holocaust and oppression.
I am titanium and assembly line.
I am Perseid meteor shower and Halley ’s Comet.
I am every black hole,
Inside, another whole universe of me.

I am seconds young, and I have much to learn of
The multitudes of the universe, myself.