Making Room

describing you
to myself

i pour hot

in silence
an ampoule

cooled glass

a moment
before desire

Seminal

Deep in the throat
they laugh-
hungry little bodies
with their pointing bones
fastened with buttons
hooking eyes

He has seen her
alone
through her window
turning her body in
the mirror

This is a gift
(she tells him)
Takes his wrist

Fingertips focus
in childlike
desire

It may take
root
grow inside
leave accompanied
by words and sounds
Thoughtless

In her parents’ bed
Red mouth agape
she listens to his
whispers

He lies
beside her
slightly
Off-centre

Counterpart

When I watch you choose your face in the morning.
When you hold the silk voice to your unshaven cheek.
Muffle questions with the scarf of your full throat.
I want to bite your tiny glass fingers,
snag the fibres of your lungs
in my clenched cat teeth
with indifference.

It stays like this,
holds to the refrain.
Strains to open and wriggle free
then leans back into itself.
A perfect disciple.

This is how we queue to touch you.
In the middle of your chest
dousing for certainties-
through the ribs,
through the pink flesh,
through the mouth.

Sensed Through Opaque Windows

It’s hard to understand architecture
when my past is sea and desert.

It could be that these things are not
simultaneous.
When you kiss me and the inside of your mouth is the colour of mulla mulla, it makes my feet burn. Then, I am standing on the red earth in the middle of the day and a girl’s voice shouts “you look deadly sis”.
Beside you now in this rectangle of flowers, in the pocket of my black jersey dress, my fingers find forgotten cherry pits (I ate them to wash those last words out of my mouth)

These pieces of memories I haven’t known
lie lightly.

Undone by the closeness of the ocean, forgetting returns in pieces. With the skin of my body resting on the skin of your body. We form small patches of darkness between us-
As smoke, leaving, the fire aspires to a more spacious form.

Todays encased
in yesterdays
Tiny birds in eggshells

Tithing

Smaller

Absence Spans