I expected regret
to rise like a bruise,
black as a berry below
kissed skin. What's left
instead is yellow-edged,
too sallow for sunlight,
an ancient injury healing
where lips had just been.
Isn't this translucence,
how we see what's broken
without breaking skin?
It feels like opening,
bloodless, sanguine,
not a cut but a key,
not a spill but invitation.
For my friend on the occasion of her wedding. What I know of mirrors is their imperfection, their imbalance of mathematics: one reflects one, & we imagine this is wholeness & we believe we know oursel
For my friend on the occasion of his wedding. No eye for art, you said, and turned toward Hunger, livid color leaving you cold, neither keen, nor compelling, not enough, not when you already know how
It is not Death that watches us with suspicion, yet you invoke Her name anyway, make of Her a boundary, make of me an earthen intimacy. There is no revelry in roots no matter how deep they run, only f