These pieces of skin
I wear
Oh, how fragile,
fragile and rare
that a love like yours could
blanket my chest
and put every nightmare
I've stumbled through
to rest

Oh what a day it is to know
your body fits mine
like a glove
you'll keep my spirit warm through
winter and expand
my capacity
for Love

I raise my arms,
palms up, to you-
My love.
I raise my voice,
diaphragm diffused,
igniting above.
And these hips?
They swirl magic beneath
their bones,
they know every crease and
fold in your body,
they play-dohed the shape
of your
rosetta stone

They contemplated what words
could be stained with your
spirit,
what phrase could sum up
your every speck of soot
and grit

So I ask my heart
and she answers with the
sweetest of whispers
a  swirl of the tongue
of her
spine
and lets herself
slink inside of that
rock
lets herself fill every air molecule
and she lets herself transform

I've become the voice in his throat
the lungs in his breast
I am his fingerprint stamped
forever on his canvas

I have become alive and I
have awakened
but how will it be when
my carrier follows his journey-
away.
Hows it going to be when
my voice has been discarded and tossed
into the wind of the desert
hows it going to be when my
lungs collapse
and shrink
in.
how's it going to be when my fingerprints
become a maze I've never
seen,
the paint stamped on his canvas
washed away
and unearthed to
bleed

What am I to do with the thinned
course of my heart,
each artery gasping
pumping  erratically
to
start
?

And Alexis,
she sings
back to me: "It will break you in every way. But you have time to steel yourself to it. To lace your blood with iron and lead, to armor your skin. You have time to fletch your arrows, and time to carve your bow. When it comes I will be there with you. I have walked this road,  and I will walk it again, with you."