"sweetest love, i do not go
for weariness of thee"

in nineteen ninety-eight
i thought i knew kinship.
i thought
my mother and father,
this still soft wolfdog,
i thought
my brother,
though we did not share youth.
what is there but kinship?
i thought
when my fat little arms took bruises
and these people touched them
like edges of glass.
my arms purple less
now
and i am not so much glass
as i am something folded and blunt,
but i found a girl whose arms still bend;
they push and pull like purposeful waves
and they bring me shells, and shells, and shells.
they count out bottle caps and they hold ashes
and houses
and they touch so gently
the occasional wale
that i fold away.
i am told i count poorly
and i lose frequently the number of
reds and blues
along her back, but i took to smearing ink on my wall
for every soft spot i found
and tried my best
to soothe.
she seeks seasides and i
do not know what i seek
but when she is luminous on pier-wood
i will have my inked wall
and less bruises
and kin by the sea.

"but think that we
are but turn'd aside to sleep;
they who one another keep
alive, ne'er parted be"

Your doorway is
a whale's tall ribcage over my head,
the walls his meat,
the floor his flexing tongue.

On evening treks I hear the heavy whine
of his buried voice
deep under your bed;
once I could press myself flat on you
and sink through your body
into his long noises;
my gall and bones stayed lodged in your skin
while my bald inside rode hills
I couldn't read.

Now I squint against midnight
and wonder if I can scrape my teeth
as white as the bathroom
while veins and moist innards
curl around the corner.
The wet red seems more grey,
more like the vague lining of a lung
from a textbook I touched five years ago
as I realize I never knew the stomach of a whale.
It's difficult to piss.

I stayed out while you were gone
seeking leaves or galloping or
whatever it is you do on long weekends,
gathering myself in pieces of fallen meat.
Our whole house is dying.

I know you are not fond of death
or crushed insects.

You live in an empty colossus.

My mother’s voice that night is only
distantly memorable:
the swelling bubbles of her anger,
the empty churn
in my throat
as I listened.
Her father is even less
so:
plastic models, a moustache.
I stood in the hall
and never saw the color of his skin
or the way moisture gathered
in the lines of his hands
against my mother’s face,
his brittle nails.

My brother’s mother I remember
as something infantile:
tiny knees, poor posture,
a face so soft I thought
I could place my fingers in it
and change her mouth,
her folded forehead.
He didn’t, but he could
hold her
in his arms
like a bronchitic child.

I have only this one,
so far:
my heavy wolfdog,
my brown eyed beast,
his great shoulders,
his broad white chest




his


prompt


departure

i am displeased when i'm not immediately good at something

which is a problem because

there aren't

many things at which i am good

oops spontaneous self loathing

basically i want to wake up before you and smile at you without feeling embarassed about it

i want to kiss your wrists and you don't think it strange of me

i want to let out all these little things but

i think you'd frown