The way to Kory’s heart
really is through his stomach
where, like clockwork, his shunt
empties cerebrospinal fluid.
“Look,” he says with a smile,
encouraging
my feather-light touch
along his collarbone
where the tendon-like cord
passes through,
and the poetry I read there,
like some kind of Braille,
is the vast difference
between its keeping him alive
and giving him life.
marble-faced and regal-eyed,
she is diamond cut
from age.
she wears a face undone
and makes a statement;
no show of bravado
nor fixed limits could ever faze
her, for she is
cool,
glass under fire,
unflinching
at the prospect of
a sudden exodus.
cheeks blooming,
she bristles yet flourishes, damaged,
above
wild annihilation.
she is the earth as it creases,
the flames as they kill.
the sleepy sirens sing and sing
but the skeletons in her closet
were never alive to begin with.
enter the murderess,
who does not speak, but
grits her teeth
and smiles, becoming sky.
i.
pearl clasps,
she's done with the rasp
of palms.
cold post-
midnight lacerations
aping the blaze
of past truth.
she's gone
when she's done.
ii.
furled maps,
the sun's traded gasps
for calm.
no postcards
or salutations,
late rendezvous
are not proof.
she's wont
to not want.
iii.
straight skirt,
the wry smile greets
the dawn.
old postures
and concertations
replay the days
of her youth.
she's known,
for now.
his secrets are old news to me now,
and he loves it when they take him higher.
and i can still feel it
deep inside this urban loop
in fragments of garden and gold.
in these desperate times
we borrow cold paradise
and do not return it.
frozen palms ignite
in a bouquet of slow bravado.
airing out this closet
has become a crime of necessity,
now,
for even roses need to
breathe.
show me your madness.
tell me how i can make you feel alive.