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.