radiates, vindicates, a hound
how to express more than what is written on your forearm
homework. be good. don’t forget. either one. just like on the fridge door, post-it notes post it to me tonight, don’t be cheap; the whole damn album. can’t say it over the phone, mmm sure, but in sheets of ice melting and the refraction of sunlight i make up in plenty voice despite my lack of words, see that i am you rubbed raw give-or-take seventeen years, your stretch marks miles-long long for my eraser lines, all alive and upright, all beating on top of our skin. bridal shower with you, i mean it; the veil is lifted up over the bath-water, one eye between us both. you buy butter unsalted to lower my cholesterol; i want to live for longer. i live to meet your babies—i can’t be your only one, damnit—i live to show you i am smart, not as angry, and eating enough.
how to express more than what is written
such a smog of love casts me in an undulating temper; whit and a vindicated, terrible silence. never with the lover, a role i gladly fill like syrup on the silk, the pillowcase, unstick me from the frying pan i’ve had it with all the anticipation—that will be what really kills me, forget the fire. i’ve been thrown out before, and i cried bent at the counter back-arched, you & all sorts of math problems that no one could teach me, i had to roll right out the room wrapped in the red carpet; it’s silly but you unfurled me. milking the movement of a heartbeat, time’s response rotten as-ever, tells you to get it over with, so that’s what you do. fetched fresh from the garden, you add it the quiche. just like in the juniper tree we feast on hope reviving itself like a dead bug. roll back over, lucky christmas beetle.
how to express more
i molded the red bricks of our place; sand taken from the shore you walked away from me on with two hands for cups, couldn’t resist apology at the breakfast table, water from the bath you ran for me at half-past four in the afternoon when i wanted to die—i lay there restless in your tub, that house those shutters this breathing of mine, iron-rich clay from the monumental motel door-frame you stood in completely naked, stroking the inside of your calf making this noise it was a bristling kiss of a candle on wet wind as it lit, two lips; like that, baby. and i watched your hands lay them for me, the intimacy of one-by-one. a child’s blocks. all i could think about was the mold; the making. i bellowed whole nights for you; what’s more, i broke through the underbelly to keep it alive.
