the shush of sheets
over bare, scissoring legs
late night undulation
thrust, parry,
push, pull
the wind from the window
is labor-shallow,
the world outside
is a woman in birth
snarling
i am devouring your pain
through savage, blunted teeth
i am shoving fistfuls of you
into a small wet cave
whose walls are painted
with figures from a dead time,
with the paint from the heads
of dead marigolds,
shatter, spin,
suddenly:
rounded eyes,
as big as two moons
in a blemished sky
i cram your heartbeat
into my ears,
all eleven measures of it
i like you terrified.
i like me poised,
catlike,
on a branch,
entranced by the black glint
of your fledgling bird's eye
somewhere down
on the winter ground
the ceiling thrums
like a skin pulled
taut over a drumhead,
the bed hums
like a skin pulled
tight over the bones
of a skull
outside, a seagull falls
for no reason
from the endlessness
of the sky
in the morning we will find it
crested, regal,
on its back, with its eyes squinched
shut and beak
curving heavenward
you unknit, suddenly,
too suddenly,
in the cold breath of the dawn,
and i spend the rest of my life
chasing down
the fleeting pieces of you
tossed about by the teasing wind
