There’s a holocaust
sweeping through my body
but i call it
love,

strap myself to its stake
as a sacrifice, relish
how its fire

dignifies me,
how the tongue-like torso  
of my scent
rolls out to taste
God.

You, with the hot air
for hair, you
with the sparking skin,
feed my flames,
you

hearteater, the mouths
on your cheeks
open wide
& I enter, as if to join
the rest of me; see

how all that is left
circulating in my veins
is your voice; my body,
now inanimate,

an instrument for your
heartsong—hear
its cinders sing like
cicadas—here

is the sequel to your stones
thrice striked.

your heart unmasks
to a dagger, already deep into my atriums,
until my muse is replaced
with the bleeding, and each stanza
is your shadow

in shackles. a poem is just a poem
until you perceive it
out of paper—in the silence,
scratching against your skull—until

it begins to burn, your body
bright-blue beneath, your secrets
streaming out like incense—until
it is a grave, with you
more alive in it.

a poem is just a poem until it bites,
until it howls, until it makes
our memory its metaphor
for midnight.

Done, ends stitched in a seam—set
to be worn over yourself.
A stain so bright, you sparkle.
Too far forward to flip. The sipper,
the straw, the soda. Bleeding ink
every blink, but still brimming.
Ripped apart like a rainbow.
A love letter to life still
in the works.

So dead you’re divine.
Only visible in the love-light.
Weird as a plant that bites
the bully, as a phlox
sprouting through sand.
Wingless like wind, fin-less
like a fluid. Lost but
listening to your own heart.
Found.

december is the dust dripping from the body
of a closed book, dry and dreamy
like an opening—like the dent
on your doughnut dimple, our lips,
loose from loving, luminous
from our icy irices
igniting;

it is what spills after the storm—
a sweet slice of sky, its silhouette
soft and soothing
like silence.

now, the moon is mounted as a mistletoe
on the tender twig of midnight, now,
our dreams, draped in december dew,
are cold kisses of eternity.

see as december drags the dead
back to breath—our bodies,
bruiseless and born

out of the broken,
wiping afresh in the white,
wet wool of winter.

if I were a god, I’d—

be solved, frame finished, insides intact
like those of an engine running smoothly, carry
this heart as heaven, with legions of love
imbuing beloveds at the flutter
of my belly butter-

flies; these
dreams as dynasties,
ever-flourishing; these creatures titled
thoughts, staying steadfast and faithful
to the tenets of my temple,
unfolding their fortunes

—be all that I am suited for

but I am stifled spells locked within flesh,
rickety humanity,
an ocean tucked into a jar—roaring
and rising, with no moon to
chase, no clouds
to visit;

and so with sharpened dreams,
with the longing for an escape, I cut strings
from my vessel,
but end up with a severed self
and a reality in ruins

and so with a turgid heart,
with a heart that keeps swelling and
searching and spreading
into too many chests, I shatter
in seasons.

oh, but even a god would be jealous
of how I keep splitting
and bleeding with so much love
left to live for, with so many dreams
destined to die for—

much more godly it
is to triumph like a god
in human body.

when you trickled, the past pulled from my eyes,
hung like (f)lashes from my eyelids—still
growing with my face, still
oscillating old images

of mama’s smile, sunken
in dimples, deep as her love for me
as a promising oasis—how
she’d ooze her only moisture
to quench my thirst,

of my little legs leaping
up the stairs, after weeks separated from home,
hoping to find mother, healed,
grabbing me into a hearty hug,

but rather finding
dad, direly drained by grief,
a grand gathering of greasy eyes,
silence, sobbing, and the sweaty sequel of
i’m sorry, we—

it was the day of her funeral,

& i was a five-year-old, already wondering
what it means to be a child without
a mother, what it means
to live to die

i let you drip into her grave, wishing
i could go along with you,
with her

but look, i’m rather
going along her prudent path,
stretching it to all the painful, all the pleasant
places,
striving to complete it

& though it’s tough
to walk this wicked world,
i’ll pass the peak,
wearing mother’s wounds
as wings.

what else but to scrape soil, trail your thumb, etch a vision onto dust;

what else but to close eyes, dive down dizzying depths, drag limbs back ashore;

what else but to friend the fire, hug the heat, sing the storm to sleep;

what else but to hold your hand, hear your heartbeat, taste the tip of your tongue;

what else but to wipe wounds, shed skin, build nests from broken bones;

what else but to keep breathing.