I surrender to your chest
and press my face against it,
as soft as wool
clipped from a sheep
who couldn’t say
I suffer.

I dread the day
I’ll make you say
I’ll leave you. But that is
what I do. I find
angel boys and postpone
their holiness.

I teach these boys
there’s a space
between blood and bone
to store prayers. That
the whistling pressure that
sequences our next heartbeats
are disappearing acts.

I make them
piggyback on me
as I kneel on all fours in
glass shards and make them say
they like it. They learn to.
They ask if
it could be them kneeling
in pain next time. It is
around this time
when I call it quits.

I said I delayed holiness.
But some of them
Never claim it back.
There’s a river of discarded objects
under the skin of someone
who’ll die for you,
and those they want back.

Between blood and bone,
prayers are stored, yes.
Yet for now, the chest;
rising and falling,
my face against it.
The lung beneath you
a universe-ordered shape
as perfect as a handhold
dovetailed into prison rails.

Beautiful angel boy.
So soft and warm.
Do you hear how loud
it gets
when the moon pulls Earth
and Earth doesn’t say
I suffer.