I.
I have loved you for generations
my tears, rivulets
carving your body’s mountains
water seeping in slick caverns
hollow inside, like the space
encapsulating your heart
that my fingers have ached to cradle
before their deaths
My love knew no infancy
it preceded my birth, drenched and shivering
more ancient than stone
its blood the sleek stream
that caresses rock, that drowns wood
ageless as the claws of fire
it churns me, swirls me like the sea
sets me adrift in vast waters
of endless, sinking dusk
What will I be left with at the end of life?
A child, a few poems, memory of song
and this love
that has chiseled me, sculpted me
passed through me
haunted me like rain
II.
We are built for love what hidden architect molded the clay of our hearts most coast on the surface settle in and are satisfied, or perpetually not why are we the victims of the aching, of the scarring of the relentless, brutal tenderness? it courses through air, through stone and sand eluding form or name makes sky and soil yearn for each other with wet embrace attacks the body as a malignancy multiplying in bone and blood in mind’s liquid clouds soaks into my bark, pools in my throat it swallows rivers, ingests mountains traces the ore of my body gives birth to seeds of rain its wind clutching the spirit of my hands my form is porous, absorbing images of your face, echoes of your voice my skin is a blanket of longing welcoming your touch souls linked with sinews of desire useless we are, except for loving our mouths hollow receptacles of reverberation eternally reflecting the beloved this ardor, careless, indifferent to our wishes— does it know whom it haunts in whose home it lodges whom it stretches with thirst creases with hunger in whose reluctant body it journeys?
III. It leaves no trace.
You will find no scar on my corpse
to mark its home, or its exit.
My veins will show no sign of its viscous pulsing.
Through my limbs it roamed like water,
a flock of birds—restless, skittish.
As a river, searching and unsatisfied.
Tormented and lamenting, like the seas.
Into my cavities it burrowed,
lying dormant until adolescence.
My form will be left without indentation –
you will not see where it gnawed me
for decades. The flesh looks whole.
When young, it sliced me raw.
I bled pulp and seeds of sorrow.
Later, I was left with the dull ache of lilacs.
At my funeral, you will kneel perfunctorily
paying respects to my withered body,
ignorant—
that it was a battlefield of passion
an arena of lust, of carnage
a cage of craving
a vessel of fire
a locus of ecstasy.
Published in Lullwater Review, Spring 2024
