darling, dearest, dead

I sit in front of maps and measure with my fingertips the distance between us. In this space, I tell the ocean to make itself smaller, we argue. I tell it please, I am in love, and it allows me to palm it in my hand and hold it tightly there. I wish the roads away. I grab the forests by the handful and plant them elsewhere, plant them in our backyard ten years from now. Like this, I slowly make the spaces between us smaller until I can walk across them. I take the ground by its edges and pull it until it’s gathered like a rug beneath my feet. I bundle the sky under my arms and don’t mind that the clouds are raining on my feet. I can walk the inches to your door and knock the wood and see you standing there in all your shocked silence. The question of the sky and the ground and the oceans all piled up around me. I can say ‘hello, look, it’s me, I love you, I’ve brought the entire earth for you.’

Forgive me father for I have sinned, I have loved a woman more desperately than I have loved God. I have looked to a woman more reverently than I have the sky. There, in the sulk of her bottom lip, I find myself talking about a heaven that only exists when she is looking at me, father she has not been forged between the dip of my teeth, she is not my rib, or my left side, she is my entire stomach, she is my spine. I have been searching for prayer, father but I have found that I can only say her name Dear God, let me have her Dear God, let her rest with me Dear God, let the sky turn red from how we burn The plum tree in our back garden has withered because I have not seen the sun for five days. I have been worshipping at the cradle of her hips father, she has cleansed me with those hands and those eyes, I do not know how to turn unless it is towards her, I do not know where to go except in her direction.

I cut off my head and threw it in the sky. It turned into birds. I called it thinking.

It’s fascinating to see the way you live, fascinating and terrible.

I barely knew I had skin before I met you.

If you stay we can figure out how long it takes. The way you kiss me around the wrists. Tap messages on my back. Don’t say a word. Write to me only in French. Turn the thermostat down to sixty and pad to the kitchen in socks, wrapped up in blankets like secrets. Boil a pot of water. Two cups will do. Come back with tea. Steam will fog between us as we wait under quilts.

You have a cold cold smile. You were burned, you were about to burn, you’re still on fire.

there are things my body could never grasp before you. Touch me–  I shred. I shed.

So I will lie beside you here unnamed until my hands recover from your skin.

there’s a potted plant  in my bathroom and it has the same name as you. i don’t know what this means, but it means something. it has to. clumsy humans, always loving, always asking why.  clumsy me, always trying to find you everywhere i can. clumsy you, always dropping and dropping. my heart, your dreams, my keys. there’s a potted plant in my bathroom and it shares your name. i forget to water it. i forget to put it by the sun. i forget to buy it. i would like a potted plant in my bathroom. i would like to name it your name. it would mean something, i think. tender, fragile humans, always looking for meaning. tender, fragile me, never finding it in you.

Your chest is becoming the field I want to be buried in.

she loves him, she drew in her breath the first time she saw him and never breathed out again, not ever.

may something comfort you—a mockingbird, a breeze, rain on the roof, Chopin’s Nocturnes, a kiss, or even me—in my chilly kitchen with my coat on—thinking of you.

This holy silence. This hummingbird breath. This sweetness on my tongue. This kiss. This blood, like wine and ashes in my mouth. This and nothing else. This sun setting the gold of your hair on fire. This hand. This heart. This soul (half mine; all yours). This love. This love. This love.

'I'm not going to die,' she said. 'Not till I've seen it.' ‘Seen what?’ Her smile widened. ‘Everything.’