“I am living / at the center / of a wound still fresh”

If you tuck the name of a loved one  under your tongue too long  without speaking it  it becomes blood

“Would you / put my whole, wounded body in your own, if I asked you?”

“I remember then how once you turned my hands over and over as though you’d lost something there.”

“Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.”

“My quiet love was yours from the beginning. I call my ankles by your name. When mother dipped me in the river, she was introducing us.”

“I was like someone dying of thirst who hasn’t the strength left to drink. That’s how thirsty I was for love.”

“You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue.”