AN OLD JULY
Over a mirror we bow our heads inhale like a prayer an old lovely affair my eyelids flutter I trace the valleys and mountains of your back naming them under my breath murmuring like a mantra shantih shantih shantih you’ve got quite the topography. You touch my shoulders like my muscles are horses you want to break I’m stiff when I wake and my spine is sore and my blades are bruised you kept trying to tame them and I know I told you harder like I’m made of stone like I’m a cliff like I’m a quarry harder so I can hear something crack feel something break I want some kind of sensation I’m still whispering the same incantation and wondering where where where the heels of your soles became so worn how your shirts hang just so off your bones what does the scar on your chin feel like wanting to crack your knuckles, I never got the chance to crack your goddamn knuckles. Your knuckles that broke above your hands like whitecaps on rough waves.
Now darling swing me around and treat me cruel that’s the only kind I’m used to used to loving used to wanting I’ll never get used to the way that way you're way of looking right through me I hate how I loved being glass to you. How do you do it how do you feel it how, in the mornings, does it make you feel the train whistles in the yard below your bed do you hate them do you love them do you feel like you should be leaving lusting loving something you’re not? I follow your cat out the window when they wake me up and I stand on your roof and watch the trains roll in like every whistle is another reason to jump I'm an antenna waiting for my bolt of lightning another train comes in and my heart races as it goes out, another thing leaving for another place.
We sat in the sand on a riverbank. You were reading a science fiction novel about werewolves. I couldn’t think of anything to say to you besides to ask what happens when we die, so I didn’t say anything at all.