It's been a bit jarring, this stumble into symmetry,
my good senses
               gluing themselves intact
         like an eleventh-hour craft project.

No string sections swelling for this comeback kid--
the just desserts, in this case,
                             arrive in the form
                             of a steady hum
                             that breezes the past away
                     with the ease of a loose eyelash
           flying in a tropical storm.

It took years to embody this equilibrium,
to approach the mid-morning sun
and not recoil from overexposure,
no longer draped in the sweat-soaked robes
                 of secrecy. I have tripped upon a biome
                 of bravery, fallen into the measurements
                 that require no prickly tampering
                 from the rusty, dulled needle
                of a fraudulent tailor.

You make me not hate snoring.
You miracle worker, you.
Usually it feels like a lawnmower
massaging my skull, but you, buddy,
croak like an angel.

The acoustics of your voice,
the high fidelity and crumpled static,
the seesaw between treble and bass,
have my head singing
pitch-perfect harmonies.
Your hum slows down my tempo,
heightens my crescendo,
sends my heart pumping
at double-time *staccato.

I want to tell you something
but my lips are flicking sparks
like a lighter draining fluid
and I want to bombard you
with all my ragged knots
of truth but the words
are stuck in traffic
giving each other the finger
ramming bumper to bumper
so they can reach the nearest
exit and my nerves
are a rickety jalopy
almost flipping over
at the sight
of any speedbump
and I'm ripping
at the edges
like the pages
of a Lynch script
because
I want to tell you something

You make my body burn slow,
like a stricken match in a film noir;
our legs intertwine
like muscular vine,
chests pressed so close
we can synchronize
our heartbeats, every artery
and vein pumping
like speed-of-light projectors.

You bend my senses, make them
forfeit heir coherences, force
my limbs to misplace
their native tongue
within a simmering puddle
of submissive bliss.

Your tongue sliding up my back?
Fosse was never so graceful.

I want to play back your moans
on speakers the size
of monoliths.

I need to pleasure you
until the wave
becomes a tsunami,
one ready to swallow all doubt
and shame and apprehension
until all that septic negativity
is trapped within our jaws,
drowning in our slithering tongues
until it dissolves as quickly
as sugar in a boiling cauldron
and there is nothing left
but our sweat and our panting
and the excitement
that these dunes of ecstasy
will repeat themselves indefinitely.

My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.

I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.

My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.

Will you hack through this cocoon?

Have you got the muscle
and the patience?

Nevermind that bedtime story.

There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.

*Can I get you anything?

Knock, knock.*
Who's there?
Someone's at the door.
Hide the stash!
Get the snacks!
For Christ's sake,
make yourself presentable!

Is the door locked?
Are the hinges rusty?
Would a baby calf
be able to kick it down
in less than 15 seconds?

Don't just sit there!
Figure it all out!

It's the first thing people see
before they enter a room-
is it wood, fresh oak?
Beads from a thrift store?
Cast-iron shielding,
bolts and locks
spattered like starlight,
like smuggled jewelry
on the inner lining
of a trenchcoat?

Are you trying to
open it, or is your back
pressed against the other side,
keeping it from budging?

Are you the intruder
or the guard dog?

It took a hastily-made hangman puzzle
to **** you, a present-day friend
of mine to simply whisper
that three-letter word
as if she were restating the gospel.

Ironic, then, that as you were dying,
I felt an era-long noose loosening.

I remember finding skin pores
mistakenly labelled as sinkholes,
every confession warranting
a "believe me, we knew" after the other.

If you had spent any more time,
an indefinite amount of days
deciding to stay lurking
in the corners of the closet,
out there in the rafters
where no one could hear you
whispering poison into my gut reactions,
I might have sprouted
a kamikaze bloodline,
a raucous rhythm in the ranks
cackling louder with each year
of silence, each span of secrecy.

Although your plastic inflection
vanished with a collective
unlocking of the joints,
your cryptic sentiment still loiters
while my common sense is sleeping,
and I remember to repeat,
three times like Dorothy,
that moment I could only
be my true self on paper.