echoes in our spinal cords
drip bile
sulphur
electricity
a brooding, remembering snake

your voice recalls
kisses, chin on neck, yours, later
the back of your knee
the crush of skin on carpet
a betrayal of fingers, yours or not

warm spite
a violence delicately buried under so many ancestors, drowned in tea
the squawk of puberty
ancient fists, in scabbards
these echoes are all mine

but the way nets hold water,
is the way we hold ours,
serpentine
believing we are the soundmakers, the moaning cello
when we have no hands and no tongues and so many hollows