Bruised and battered,
blood droplets gather over marks of old scars
and bone fractures poorly healed.
My body is a broken home
and hurting’s how I heal.

Curled, a cradle, cusping
silky supple soft,
aloft rustling skin
prickling static afterthought.
Nose in, mouth out,
internal furnace burning hot,
bitter winter giving way
to flame that’d dim for naught.

Now I lay me down to sleep, mind naught but unwound thread,
the nearly risen sun prepared to rear its ugly head.
No mowing, honks, or rooster’s crow, but sounding in their stead:
my racing thoughts, your steady breath, all time suspended here in bed.

Thread counted in linen robes,
his thatch of hair an areole.
Armored tight against the world,
with metered calm and stoicism.
Freckles, scars, lashed eyelids.
Both hard and soft,
all that he is.

Hazy street lamp light,
illuminating nocturnal spirits or otherwise
the ghost of a fire burning low,
all green tinder and ember,
its tender lain down
for the night.

Self-effacing, holy,
a graven image flourishing
in pleasure, or pain.
The hierarchy of mind
oscillating wildly behind
smoke screen, or curtain.
Uncertain mirth blanketing
kinetic barren earth
like ash, or rain.

Like a monster
wearing my own skin,
I question yet again
whether the cries I upend
are signs of intelligence or
the incoherent utterances
of an imposter begging
to be let in.