See, world:
the hook of spectacle
pierces deep, yet still
it unmarks the grave.

Fully embodied by forty,
as if drifting could only mean
you’ve wasted the plot.

What a gift to be given
A liver, in all of its lavishness –
cemented with neuroprotective geodes
like three little pigs
entombing the past
with brick-thick virtue.

And the privilege
to ornament your exit –
I watched the crowd part for you,
watched the water rise with you,
attention bent close,
a breath holder.
Your wetsuit cinched
by scripted eulogy.
No blood to rush for show.

Nevertheless, I see what you siphon,
the caramelized glint of awe,
the cherry red stain
of sugar-slow afternoons,
when every eye lit up,
pulled from the skin of their bodies
sunk into the nostalgic now.

But I can lick nuance
and eat it like a scallop,
rose-fused with thorn-fat,
dressed on a dialectic plank.

Yes, I understand
the texture of a heart
can spellbindingly sting.

The cost is real,
nonetheless –

uncharted depths know
no stasis;
in-touch pools’ vastness
can vanish all the same.

Yet creatures speak in riddles,
their syllables unlocked
by curated glass.
We inject our story with certainty
to erase pane after pane,

until no water-side window
remains to wander off
into bare-legged beginnings,
where the tide of becoming
first whispered your name,

long before that echoing blue
veiled the sea,
as you rose in a fountain’s reach,
already bearing the loss.

The beach sat lavender-calm,
skull-dull as if the tide
had sedated its own tongue.
Sun-brined bodies swiveled
under salt-drowse.
Deveined cloudy light
warped into a quiet
wound tight enough to pin
the wing-hinge of a fly.

I’m learning to let this gelid
drift of elements infuse my lips
with dried preserve –
a petal pressed in the mouth of a book.
Asymmetrical leaves
tell me to tap my longing
in chlorophyll Morse –
a truth kept only for them.
But the trees’ root-teeth
had drained the leaves colorless
the night before
when I pined for you to stay –
then said I didn’t care
only as you turned to go.

Now I’m rapt
in photographing a spider.
Her web is theatrical
in the crevices, an empty stage
of delicious sleep.

She swaddles her heartbeats
with gossamer threads,
tucks them soundly inside
like sweet, silent lambs.

I’m pretty close to plucking
my third eye.
It turns out that having two
is more akin to eight.

The numbness is soft
and strangely animal.
Already, it has taken
my violet-bruised otherness
and sealed it in silk.