little things.
Sleep comes shallow in a cold bed,
like there’s snow stuffed between the sheets.
I rise heavy as ice, and early,
a body composed of phantom limbs,
shaking and unfeeling at dawn.
A pull at the blinds finds the ground bare,
like we’re at the bottom
of an empty cupboard; just crumbs
of snow.
In my dreams, I tried
to explain to you the abstractions of
how the soul is a palimpsest, and that
god is made in the back of the throat.
But all you did was parrot the word over and over,
feeling the contractions of muscles, the sexual
arcing, flickering of the tongue like candlelight:
god… god, god god…
until god had no meaning,
so I kissed you, just to shut you up
and tasted god’s traces.
My body fumbles awake in the bathtub,
flinching at the heat of it that flushes legs red,
and semblances of feeling eat at the edges of me.
I’m staring at the chipped toe polish,
at the ring of rust around the leaky faucet mouth,
at the yellow and blue of bruises submerged,
and I wonder what it is, exactly,
that you find so endearing.
