bodiesbodiesbodiesbodiesbodies
Earlier your body was pressed into mine
As closely as two skins can be through layers of clothes
The movement of your head and breath on my shoulder as we tried to swim in the last dregs of us
now I run at you, hard
My shoulder hits into your stomach
my arms crash you to the ground
My weight landing on you, hard
Bodiesbodiesbodiesbodiesbodies

We spin round one another
in places, friends, conversations, songs
Circling
Orbiting
We both know we’re there and we’re aware
But we pretend to be oblivious
The distance too breathtakingly close
The gap too heartbreakingly wide

How do people do this?
I am so full of love I can barely eat
She bubbles inside me like wine
I’m spinning in the swirling glass of her
I can’t keep her from breaking out across my face in a smile
It’s her it’s her it’s her it’s all her
I am less me now and more her

I keep going to the river to pray
say my words into a rock and sink it in the pool
tie my doubts together like daisy chains
And let the stream pull them out from me
I slip my clothes off
crack my shoes from my feet like shucking oysters
Dip in heel-first
Let my body flow after
I sit like tea in the shallows
Sins dissipating from my skin in swirls
push off from the mud
mouth open
Gulping at the river bed
My flesh cooling to meet the temperature of the water

My cousin looks more like my mother than I do.
The acid of this hits the back of my throat
makes me think of
family rooms with eyes that pierce and wonder
Years of explaining the Northern control of my accent
Why was I taken from the sun
that caused the freckles on my kins cheeks
like kisses
Raised alone like tall corn amongst the barley.

Glutton
Swollen child
Raised to expect love
Like water from a tap.
Reliable
Plentiful
Clean.

She leaned in
and I held my breath
thirsty for what she might say.
She told me something she has told a thousand people before me.

All the blood ran out of my body and out of the nightclub and into the sea.