your heart unmasks 
to a dagger, already deep into my atriums,
until my muse is replaced 
with the bleeding, and each stanza
is your shadow

in shackles. a poem is just a poem 
until you perceive it 
out of paper—in the silence,
scratching against your skull—until 

it begins to burn, your body 
bright-blue beneath, your secrets 
streaming out like incense—until
it is a grave, with you 
more alive in it. 

a poem is just a poem until it bites, 
until it howls, until it makes
our memory its metaphor 
for midnight.