the half-dark shifting, turning
spits out a tooth
and this is how it starts.
oh, this is not a malicious thing--
no, it's hopeful. it's rose-cheeked.
it's embryonic. it's blind, fumbling,
white-knuckled and red-lipped
like children, like children
we're like children
and this is how it starts:
summer's blood and
poems we thought were
about original sin.
feelings we stole
from second-hand carpets
and carbon eyes we borrowed
from novel lovers.
this is how it starts:
artless and green, but
still sweet, still tinged
with sun and the sea—
never mind that it is a dead thing,
that it will sting on the ride back home,
that blood-stained men cradle the shoreline
with hard hands
that the feeling is big and full of love
but it's not happy, not quite.
no, it's more like a lower-case letter,
like a thursday afternoon.
like hope, stolen and curled up in a corner
like god, who i must mention,
who i can't help but mention,
who is not everywhere
but would you believe me if i said
i wish he was?
because i believe you when you sound like spun glass,
when you say that two years ago you felt the world
break a bone and that's when
you fell out of love
with love. that's when
this all started, i think.
when you kicked the chair.
when you cut your hair.
when you told me you are haunted
by the absence of things
and nothing will ever be able to fix that.
no, this isn't what you think it is.
this is not a sorrowful thing.
it's skyful. it's loveful. it's the swell
and crash, swell and crash
of a dead sea. it's sweet, but
endless. sweet, but unrelenting.
(this isn't what you think it is,
but please, please don't tell anyone.)
