The wolves stepped from the wood
Padfoot, quickstep, under ****** moon
Their mouths agape and yawning
Tongues lolling to steam the air
Eyes yellow and gold
The first wolf that had ever walked
Swallowed a portion of the sun
And they have been hoarding fire
Inside them ever since
And these wolves, from the darkening wood
With their misted fur backs
Twitching ears and slow careful steps
They lift their heads in one drawn-out moment
Speak with one voice
A voice that echoes like man
That lilts with arrogance not of wolf
To say that the world was raining blood.
The sun
The moon
They heard the wrongness of that voice
Saw the guns pointed at weeping muzzles
And they heeded
Noise shattered the ever-night
Sunlight averts her eyes
A moon crimson and shameful
The sky exploded in death
The woods grew darker

Sleeping king that sings to my dreams
Who weaves slender horrors most deadly
That hold back all my nightmares
My stalactite lord, under earth I look
Over hill and tomb I search
And do not find a clue of you
I trace your face in books of old tithes
Debts paid and kingdoms conquered
The fossils of you that smash against
The sea of a world you never sailed to
There is no one living who could tell me
What mouth produced such lilting voice,
Eager tongue and godly drawl
My ears tremble with it, when
The world has forgotten how.
But the dreams
The dreams know your name
The nightmares, too

When Eve plucked golden apple
From supple branch
Her lip curled in sly smile
As Adam looked on, fearful
Teeth rending forbidden fruit
Tasting like wrath and every secret God had ever kept
When those juices dribbled from her chin
Turning to blood beneath her forked tongue
She knew she could set Eden to blaze
Leave smouldering ash where beauty once dwelt
Snake winding up her thigh
Tongue slipping to taste hellfire
Every story ends with her
With woman
With a smile that torches the world

I rip off the bandaid
And uncover the terrible truth beneath
It weeps afresh
Gaping red eye staring at me
Bleeding it’s own tiny sorrows
The walls press harder and harder
Boat in a glass bottle that lets the whole ocean in
The rush of it swallowing everything else
Mast, hull and keel becoming sodden
Driftwood piercing lungs and letting
That whisper trickle through
Seeping poison and rot and wrath
Truth enough to drown in
Truth that stares to the splintered ship of myself
Truth that ripples only the world and not the water,
I look away first

I will not always love myself
I do not, and cannot
In a world like this
With a body like mine
That dips and rises like a mountain range
With its too-dark veins
A stark and unflattering contrast
To my moonrise skin
The rivers and tributaries that swim
It is not always as beautiful
As an awakening earth
This hair like mud
Eyes like mud
Barren soil that cannot always
Yield great harvest
I will not always bear fruit
This body, small and easily crushed underfoot
Do we always love the bug?
That breaks beneath our heel?
Body of mine that does not sing for me
Voice of mine that cracks and breaks
I will not always crave to hear the echo
But ...
But.
I know that though I will weep
On mornings where I do not glow inside the sun
In all the ways I am so desperate to
On mornings where his palm on my stomach
Is the soft tether that keeps me dreaming
On mornings where his kisses
Are the only warmth I want to bask in
I know that he loves me
That he loves this body
Moreso the battlefield beneath
And sometimes, mostly, always,
That is enough.

How could I not love the sky?
When the sun so kindly cups his face
Gold-hued fingers tracing the lines of his mouth
Gentle as I, with his heart aglow through his chest
Her speckled pink blush spreading
As he opens his eyes to her, smiling
Greeting the morning like it is his first one
How bashful she is, to witness the green of his eyes
Sleepy from dreaming, and I
How lucky I am to meet them
Knowing these lips can kiss what the sun can only cradle
So yes, how could I not love the sky
When she has the same warmth for him
That beats in the echoes of my breast
Incandescent, and unending

She speaks, and stars spill from her lips
She blinks, and flowers bloom on every eyelash
She laughs, and the sun slows it’s turning to hear it
The moon dips into the sea, aching to be closer
It is spring, and magic is waking to her touch