The sky turning gold in the west
Is the color of the place below
Your belly button
That tells you
You want
And when the winter wind goes soft
And the days grow warm and long
We take all our clothes off
And lay burning at the sun
Don't worry, child
The things you want will come
Like comets and hurricanes and nothing
Like you thought
And the best way to get to the places you're trying to
Touch, so you can touch
All the beautiful that you want to touch
Is to get rid of everything you think
You own
And the best way to find
The fire burning through your bones
Is to lay yourself bare
And shine gold back at
The sun

There is a chord at the center of me, braided
Of all that I've been, am, or even will be.
And I am built around it, eye
The I that you see.
I don't know what it is that you're trying to hold
When you hold onto me.
But I think you should know at least, what I'd like to be
A reminder, and not a rope
A door, but not the whole house.
My love is a thousand separate sentences
Perfect in their rhythm and their grace.
They do not know each other, each
Is a sovereign story
With its own shape and taste.
Moments outside of time and place,
Pressed into the page.
Like the night you met me at the door of the bar
You filled the whole space.
And I did not look away, though I could not remember your name
I stood still in your gaze, it was full
Of words outside of time and place.
When we said goodbye
I curled myself into your collarbone
A lover's embrace,
And remembered your name.
This
Is the shape of my love
Brief moments of grace, living
Outside of time and place
Pressed
Into the page.

It is all of value.
The days when I am wrought through with tired fear, days like bogs,
Bed, a big dark hole I cannot lift my body from.
The days I forget myself, days I can't get comfortable inside my body So, restless, I shift and slump and hide it away,
Afraid that I am defined by it,
Defined by the way it is sometimes unbearable to be in it.
It's okay. Sometimes it's hard to be here.
Sometimes I get lost in helpless, exhausting anger at the way
I can still fall into the same old holes after everything,
Even after it all.
But it's okay.
It is all of value.
Maybe I didn't know what I was getting into when I chose this life,
Maybe I just knew that I needed to be here, this way, this place,
This time, in a place and time defined by place and time.
Where I was before was not like this, so of course it's been hard,
Hard like
Being something I didn't remember I was inside of something I didn't know how to be.
But it's also been a gift, being so new to all this
I don't have to pull the roots of time out of me,
Don't have to peel back the sticky dead spiderweb layers of history.
I can take what I need and give everything I can.
I can write my own path,
Walk through all the doors I allow myself to see.
I can do my work, work my love, sketch my heart across this life.
And really, the beauty of it all is breathtaking, blinding.
Beauty like sitting in the park, like the first rain of spring
A sweet fruit held loose in the sky, sun hanging halos through the clouds,
On a hill with sisters, sisters singing songs to the people passing by while two young boys play behind us,
Shy shadow dancing in the background
Without admitting they are dancing,
Disguising it in whoops and leaps and clumsy limb-ridden grace
Until they are accidentally in front of us,
Until we ask them to sing, until they sit and sing,
We are made of sound, together we are music.
Beauty like how every ordinary moment is filled with extraordinary perfection,
Just waiting to be seen, sang, heard, danced.
Beauty being the fiber of reality, waiting to be felt.
Beauty like that.

Your voice is like a snakebite
If that snake had smoked a thousand cigarettes
And only spoke Spanish, or Italian, I never could tell
If it had hands
That were always covered with dirt, rough like rocks in the river
And its venom were smoke made out of honey
Your voice is like a snakebite, I can feel it in my blood
Your voice is like a snakebite
I want to **** the poison out