written july 29 2022
he is routinely unwound, wound back in again — on himself,
the conditionals of his mind / the fast hot shorts, the cigarette-way his breath curls
up when he says ‘darling.’ i am terrified he does not realize how much — i like
him, how i catch myself from saying ‘i love you’ in every text
and at the end of the phone call when the night is closing in and the stars are sleepy
careful things unseen from my basement dormer. and i am every woman every
untaken girl lying hot in her mothers house — and he is every taker every man every
grand mythological configuration of the two — the prince. who comes bearing
phallic weapon ready to take and spill my second first blood. and i am lying too late
in my bed the alarm clock shaking in small fits, his gm text plastering fast
into my head: these are our love letters, these are written in tombstones and graveyards
and spring rains and low wavering lavender moors. written in the battlefield, the
hearth and carved into small — green and grey response boxes. i imagine him railing me
against the cabinets, i imagine his tongue going over my neck. the insides of my legs turning
green and spurling out vines–vines–vines! could you again, this is new this is being
wanted! the far green country cut and placed into
me, into the moaning of my cunt the thin unwavering uncut strip
of it. the water crying out inside me — he comes to the fountain and he drinks, he releases inside
me the flood the hurricane. and afterwards i am the harbor and the mother. he has
blue eyes like the sea, violent and broken and careful eyes — sensitive and unbroken
eyes, the length of a man who takes me and leaves me and comes desperate back, unwringing my damp face into the race / the wind. he says, man and wife i am poured out
for you, he says take this cup and drink.
the last pavilion 