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My best friend tells me it’s nice to see me this way:

heart torn from my rib’s cage and stitched sloppily to my cuff.

Yours has always been there.

Always and ever on that sleeve,

never to leave. Never given? Never taken?

Ever to be observed, never to be kept?

She likes to watch me strip flesh from bone, dressing the reservations down around cold feet.

This ‘side of me’, this blood I don’t often let for thirsty lovers.

I bruise beautifully beneath the thumb of June.

I fracture gently beneath confessions spilled so soon.

A prepositioned gaze and a prophesied heartache.

Practice. My senses,sins and sentiments—

Purloined and palmed.

It’s as if— there, this tug when I look at you.

When you have me, seeing in place of looking.

Are your eyes the green of envy or the green of hope?

Your lashes Folly’s gold or Truth’s?

Vivid. Virid. Lurid. Lures trailing lips, life on a line, hopes on a high wire with all six feet of you to fall into and be buried under.

God built me a hollow instrument, tuned to minor keys in mourning.

God put strings in my heart and the sight of you plucks them.

Mellow melodies and rabid rhapsodies,

bow to string with no rosin to soften the kiss.

My lungs struggling through vibrato: An ache I can’t breathe away.

[none of the images used belong to me]