for c., in retrospect.

I.

I curl my toes into the dark
and fold my body until it is shut.

You, soft-eyed and apologetic,
my quiet fire, my nameless love,
you want to open yourself up
and ignite, want to burn ourselves
until we are consumed by flames--

but my skin has turned to brick.

II.

You have given me light--
light to sink my teeth into,
to drive fast with, to dive into
deep water, light to grab and hold
and keep within me, light to
blind me, to guide me, to melt me,
light to seize with my hands
and swallow and whisper to--
you are mine.*

III.

Our expiration date hangs like a scythe,
like the sharp claws of God,
like a knife, waiting to chop the wick from this candle
and turn my nights to ash.

so apparently the blood between my legs makes me less
less than a skyscraper with men in suits and vests
less than a cluster of cells who can’t breathe yet
less than a white man with a **** and a company
and if i can’t even pick what grows within me
how the **** can you call me free?

i’m nothing but an oven to cook your bun
nothing but a *** object for your own fun
nothing but an *** for you to cat-call
as you walk down the street, down the block, down the hall

i’m nothing but a **** for sleeping around
you’re the “ultimate player,” the king of the town
you call me a ***** for taking control
but you’re just a “leader,” you’re running the show

my sisters have died because they said “no”

and you won’t let me have the drugs that keep the blood in check
and you won’t let me save myself when my body’s almost wrecked
and you think it’s fine to strip my rights for Holy God Most High
and you think it’s fine to **** me if i’ve showed a little thigh

so a revolution is on the horizon
the only solution is all women rising
with venom and gunshots
with words to attack--

**we’re taking our ******* bodies back

I am in love--

with the monophonic hum of the vibrating
strings of existence, stars and fingers
and atoms singing a Gregorian chant,
the chaos of particles, wildly dancing,
the beauty of the infinitesimal,
the belief in a theory
of limitless possibilities.

I am a poet, not a scientist.
When I close my eyes,
I exist on a quantum level.
Physicists' particles, theorists' strings,
dance in purest form:
gracefully spinning en pointe electrons,
belly-dancing quarks, lithe and writhing,
a photon, swaying, dressed in light.

For comfort, I walk at night
on Einstein-Rosen bridges
from my world to others,
searching the stars for angels;
for escape, I wrap myself
in a quilted multiverse,
knowing that a version of me exists
in a universe with a version of you.

if you fill your pockets with stones
if i make a bed in my oven
if we fade into whispers
who will write for us?

I.

your Blitz came in the form
of uterine invasion, tissue and blood
in ovarian prison camps,
red as the streets of London.

****** lives in the same apartment
with a beer gut and "paternal rights,"
sieg heil* forced into your mouth
and you are too weak to fight.

You close your eyes.
There has never been a door
to my bedroom, you think.

Blood seeps from your thighs.

Every night, you sleep for so long
and waking up is agony:
what if-- what if i didn't have to wake up again--

once-verdant fields are dry,
dreams are dead,

and the stones feel smooth in your palms.

II.

My world is a bell jar, a chrysalis:
I beat my tiny fists against the glass
until they are bruised as midnight.

They cried his name, cried "suicide,"
speculated on prescription cocktails
as they tipped back wine and thought nothing
of the ones he left behind,
crying on the livingroom floor.

Life was taken from me then
and I have no power to grant it now--
I am Rachel, barren, empty,
in need of a Bilhah.

I was born to a trailer park mother
and a farm-bred father,
and I am proud of them both--
their secondhand flatware was better
than any silver spoon

but here in the land of the stars and stripes,
you cannot break your cocoon
you cannot spread your wings
unless someone pays to crack your shell.

I am stuck.

My oven is apartment-sized
and the kitchen has no door
but it is small enough
that it wouldn't take long.

III.

You and I have loved each other for years,
and the cruelty of distance has kept us
from touching each other.

Once, you said you hadn't given up
because we made a promise to each other,
and it hadn't yet been consummated.

Part of me never wants to kiss you,
if only to keep you breathing.

IV.

Or maybe--
after--
we could hold hands
and walk into the ocean
together.

I.

I read an article by a man whose sister was killed
when a plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
He visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
"Vulgarity with the noblest intentions," he called it.

I think this article
is the most important thing I've ever read.

Until this moment, no one has put into words
how I felt, all those years ago,
when you finally, finally got to sleep
and never woke up-- when your face was everywhere,
when strangers speculated, "Oh, I bet it was suicide;"
"**** yourself up like that, deserve to die young;"
"Shame. Addiction, that is--"
--and none of them knew you and
the vacancy in my heart was headline fodder
and I saw your face and heard your name every day
and no one stopped to realize
that their tributes might be killing the ones who loved you.

II.

Those men and women in the towers became posthumous media darlings,
their names used as war cries, whispered in museums, offered as prayers,
and as icons and martyrs they lost all humanity.

You became some sort of James Dean, the unlikely hero in a tragedy,
and they spun you a romantic, drug-laced casket to lie in
because it would sell the most magazines.

Death is nothing more than trinkets and dollars.

III.

At the museum, there are recording booths
disguised as therapy, collecting the stories
so they can be told in U.S. History classes to our grandchildren.

I never talked, not once, not once,
because I was afraid of being forced into one of my own.
What would I say?

IV.

His sister was turned to ash and so were you.
We have no place to stand and mourn.

He laughs at the rows of unidentified human remains;
maybe because there's nothing else to do.

I wonder if you have grown flowers.

V.

"Everyone should have a museum
dedicated to the worst day of their life," he says.

*******, I say.

Veil me at dusk with a curtain of stars;
I want to live with the tenderness of war,
the blood-stained heartbeat
of gunpowder and sedition,
the hollow soul, the stolen bones,
the mute stare of seclusion.

Ankle-deep in mud,
forced to face each other,
we give few words to the thick air.
Few were ever needed.

Your fingers are cold and hard as ice.

Inside your ribcage dwells a colony of skeletons,
dusty and sanguine, broken and sharp,
building houses for the ghosts
of all the men you've killed.
I can hear them in the dead of night,
arid voices whispering "welcome home."

Veil me at dusk with a curtain of stars;
I want to live with your demons.