[olympia]



I could dig my nails into the wrinkles of your face, dust
tingeing the skin like age and moss. We breathe heavy
in some elemental atoms of ash and rust. Inhale water, choke to
earth, vomit sparks and charred flesh. If you move you sink
faster. We survived our mothers and fathers but bone
will outlive us. I could be the worm that bleaches the shell

of your cheek. Your skull is crystal, smashed diamond, shell
once punctured lilac and cloth. Pay for youth and I’ll stay: dust
settling like cold coins at your feet. You can grab me heavy
by the ankles. You can grab me at elbow, at knee, at the too
many places I bend and contract. If we were continents we’d sink
slow, move measured like earthquakes through ocean silt. Let bone

splinter like bark when you stretch under sheets. You, the bone
archaeologist of limb under covers, climb rungs of spine shelled
over knuckles of stretched torso. We become chalk outlines in sleep, raised dust
on mattress in fetal curl. If you give me your turquoise tongue, that heavy
stone of breath and wet, I’ll tell the Truth. Your mouth is tide and shore to
canyon. You wrap me in blankets like bandages, lick my wounds until they sink

in, stained and forgotten. There is a song for each breed of disease, sunk
into sound like empty blisters. I gnaw on the blood clots in your ears, discard what bone
means. I can eat the tumors off your skin. Pay. I’ll swallow them whole like shells
of snails down the throat. Your neck is a metal rail I could kiss, dusting
mouth over the stale cinnamon and sweat. We flicker like moths in light, heavy
with the humid ink of sunless sky through the open window. Is this too

much? I could be lovely for you, with arms as long as legs and two
weeds in my hair. My head floats on a sea of twine when you’re gone, sunk
like religion breathed out in exhale. I’m tired of the blue fathers and bone
mothers, telling me what to do. Let me pick thorns out of your hair, shell
them into thick palms, waiting for some thrust of medicine and old dust.
I could be strangled by your shoulder. I could be suffocated by heavy

chest, hollow muscle and marrow. Let me go. I want to be heavy
rib between your teeth. I want to live past brick and this room and too
many things. I dream you are mincing avocado skin and citrus in my kitchen, sink
full of water, dish soap up arms, red apron around your waist. Then the bone
outlives us, then the bone-bred laughter cries out with the absurdity of shells
in jars on the window like specimen or creatures freshly caught for supper. Dust

rises with day, is rinsed off like fresh shells cleaned in the sink.
I whisper heavy words to the side of your head, only two
missing one: God leaks like dusty discharge out the ears and then bone.