Eli looks at me while buttoning his shirt and asks: “Where do shadows go when it rains?” I take a sip of communion wine and lift my body from the baptistry. “Here.” My thumb stroking his left chest pocket. Christ, we both know about disappearing acts. He smiles for a moment before a tear unfurls like a ribbon. I kiss his eyes and then we slip out the back. My lips still salt-wet. Where does love live when it’s forbidden? My feet turn the pedals. Eli’s hands are on my waist as we bike into the sunset. Two fallen angels.

Sometimes I pretend to have blood-love enveloping. And if I did, when I’m too weary to breathe they’d tell me:

“Rinse out your soul in sage and citrus. Wrap your heart in artichoke leaves. Kiss your cheeks with bing cherries and paint your nails chartreuse. Drink.

This tea is ancestral and sweet. Son, breathe. Slip your limbs into water so salted you’re floating.”

They’d burn candles ceremoniously. And inside this ring of protection, my racing thoughts cease. A holy basil embrace. A family.

But let’s be real. When my inhale catches in my throat like a flash flood. I’m alone. It was all just a fantasy painted in cord blood.

A Sicilian lemon grove.
Root-rotted.
Fruit of stone.

He was lost in the second verse when a hand settled softly on his chest. & if he knew then what he knows now, he’d see it not as gentle. Not as sweet.

He would’ve leapt from the sill of his second-story window if only to feel less perishable.

He’d mind the gap when boarding the train. Calmly staring out the window at the syrup sunset & a longhorn-shaped hole. A matador, too slow.

But it was the love J didn’t feel when holding him that sent him screaming down the street. It wasn’t serene. It was wet with love-deth.

&
d e a f e n i n g .

The chorus hit like an ice pick when the white car pulled up to drag his body away. The berbere dream euthanized and preserved in a jar. On display for strangers to gawk.

The way your forearm sculpts as your fist pumps the steam. Give me all the toppings on a six-inch submarine. My god, I’m starving.

Eighty-five cents and something sweet. You’re laughing with your friends. But can you imagine? In the closet near the vending machines. You could be my BB King.

You see,
I've been downhearted baby
Ever since the day we met

And it’s worse at the bar. 1 am. I’m locking up when you hold me tight. You dare to kiss my neck. A choice, unfair. Boy, you better come correct.

Because you split. No ****. But I want two scoops of you in my bowl. Whipped cream and a cherry stem in my teeth. I could be your Dairy Queen.

Ever since we met
(your hair moves in the breeze)
I’ve been downhearted
(the way you look at me)
I’ll never be your baby

I’m trapped, ok. Do you understand? Frozen on Delaware. Teetering on a low-head dam. Praying to be pulled into the drowning machine. Yet stuck like a glitch two seconds from death. I am the déjà vu black cat on loop. Subsisting in a broken economy where heartbeats are stutters of lace in a famished bed. Don’t you get it? I’m not even here. Or there. Call my name and listen to it echo down the halls of Lovers Lane. Ricocheted off the asphalt and taped into cardboard. Left behind in past-due storage units. A scuffed CD-R in a wi-fi world. Desiderium monolithed in bedrock. An analog fossil shipwrecked in minor key. Driftwood grief washed upon a February beach.

Soil alchemy under the lilac tree. The smell of a dozen dead tadpoles stuck in the aquarium filter. Porcelain figures—staring at me. Sunshine on Leith. Newspaper film wet with chemicals. Attic bedroom touching. Return of the Mack. Leaf River Napstering. Two scoops of blue moon in a waffle cone. The dial-up tone before 2am A/S/L-ing in a gay chat room. Vinegar dripping from faucets dipped in 24k gold. All of that blood and screaming our silver CR-V to the vet. The midwife and a placenta in the freezer to forget. Cloth diaper pails and thermoforming meltdowns. The domino effect of coming out. All alone in the Jefferson house. A Modern *****. A small fist. A dance floor. The sound of his voice. How all of these things are darlings on a cliff top. Waiting their turn to be ****** off.

The ineffable innocence of a child dancing in fire-smoke. A forest twig plucked becomes a magic stick. The ember tip wisps a spell into existence. But with all of his conjuring, he could not stay the Eateress. Her coal-kissed nails twisting into flesh.

“It’s a burning, breaking thing. This world.”

His eyes look scared, even when they’re smiling. The dirt-curse she wove entwined in his spine. A biting, retching thing. The time has come for new witchery. Seventeen steps into the woods. Six steps back. Turn left. Tracing the rings of Saturn around his skull.

“Make it blacknesses. Make me blacknesses.”

Three fingers to his chest. He talons away some bits of flesh. The blood, lets. He shift-shapes not into a beast, but a carcinoma. Devouring the Eateress from inside and returning to his original form once she has died.

In the following hours, he sits fireside. Pokes a log. Dreams of dancing. And with smoke in his eyes, he cries:

“It's that boy.
Him I want to put my arms around.
To hold him. To hold him.
Chase the scaredness away.”