to reach the inside the chest
I must pass each echo of your footfall
in sound, a flowering ice
sterling in black cavity

this is not a misguided note,
nothing that was already written and recycled.
I came here on time
tickled by the frost’s silence

as the birds sing
from the right ear to the left: synchronicity/
something stuck in my gills

who is this effigy?
on my knees is how I asked
let me show you what I mean:

I loved how our days thrived
folding the static rain to air
and the giggles of buggied children
nothing in this nocturnal kit
can clothe us from the light—
god always penetrates

my insides house
the four-year-old me
he digs in the backyard
while we both hold him
in day-lit love
in us, in god, he is never lost

[exoskeleton, exhale]

we judge the railway tonight
the taste of our open sores
we tongue in Ever Day
the things without an answer
sleep together with us
their scales, slivered
and silken with our breath

I open your chest
as I take the red sack off my face
I don’t stop the car
as I bend at the neck
and see my own reflection

even in this cold, this sacred pain
love builds the dawn
paints it in goldisect

even when we lose our way
the generous
bind with us
to the depth of this universe until
the smidge is gone

to reach the inside the chest
I take your hand
and pull through the hindering splinters


is anybody there?
is anybody there?

the silence shapes this boy, unheard
in the sanctuary of dead flies
in the clip-side of the brown, microscopic eye
these words ribbled out my chin:

I’m lost, midnightlove.
Now, I’m lost.

I infra-read you again
now that I told the cold to stop
now that I found the breathing tube/
the muck of black lung
and saw the Ferris Wheel tickets inside;
I drank in that night until a glorious emptiness
housed us, until you couldn’t pinpoint my name. somehow
in this veined river, in the lake filled with echoes, you found me
nameless—perfect. and I realized that all my life, I had been sowing my soul
on your tongue.

I get off my feet,
replace the devils that owned me,
find these hexes in rogue. I am detained no more.
the quieted and shielded
boy finds the fence as I fall, empty,
splitting my lip on your knee.

with these shreds, I count
the particles of light in the darkness.
enter the state of dawn.

as hafiz said,
we are two fat men sitting in a boat. when the boat is rocked,
we bump into each other’s bellies and laugh.

this is how I will remember us:
love filling our bellies to laugh
as we sail away in the little boat
to the cottage on the smooth-stone shore