I move to fill
up space. I am moved
to make full that which
hungers.

By age ten, I loved
to climb down into the caves and press
my body to the cool sandstone that has
forever smelled of fertile silence,
between the breathless black
jaws of some unclaimed tomb
no bigger than my own living
vessel, I would
rest.

The earth himself would hold me
within my body’s borders,
tuck me beneath his tongue to
smother my unyielding urge to gobble
up stagnant spaces like a rabid dog
who can’t bear to waste a drop
of this free life.

When you left
I did not stay
on my side
of the bed. I swelled
out like the tide until I took
up this whole ocean of quilt
I pour

my blind and gaseous longing like wet smoke
into the awkward pits at dinner
parties, disguised in a charade
of mirth, playing the hysteric fool to
unite strangers in their incredulity-
it was meant
to be a gift.

They say life is not perfect
but the craving for life is

Perfect.

It was meant to be
a gift but all too often I swallow
up the many timbred voices that compose
a well-cultivated room,
exhuming and exhausting myself as
a black hole must exhaust herself from kissing

the mirror again and again
until lipstick mars the emptiness
that gazes back at me,
filling me with her
craving.