we are lines that run parallel to the sea and never drown.
you are beautiful and i study every inch of your
body, hidden under layers of threads woven perpendicular,
crossing over your heart and back again, over and under and i’m
very nearly jealous, if not for the way you let me
into your body
and folded into your arms, skin to skin
miles of skin for me to mark and kiss and worship and baptize
with these earnest eyes welling up because this isn’t what i
wanted, this isn’t
right
because you’re supposed to get up now, and tell me to stop being a girl,
and pick up that shotgun hefted like an extension of yourself
and spray the world with salt and holy water because nothing is holy anymore;
not on its own
not without us,
and we are the sacrilegious baptizing saints, flinching away from rosaries and
counting sidewalk cracks.
but here you are on the horizon and you’re too still like this so i
shake you awake and i give you my sweatshirt because i can’t give you my
heart to replace yours, weary in your chest
and beating so slowly
.
i might as well be dead.