no. love, you are porcelain
fragments; pushpins spilt.

these things puncture underfoot. blue.
threads in softness; lines going
across me, you were so tender,
little sinking bites.

ceramic shards,
how my feet bloom
wet, along your mouth
red peonies and claret,
oxidized kisses on a pane.

i would scatter you:
silver tacks and iron pins;
how you dizzy on my splintered floors, how
fearfully sweet my heart races and aches
the way i pierce you into my flesh.

Fraying

There is a way the shirt unravels,
a little stray thread,
that you tuck,
into the fine, sturdy body of the hem,
with a promise,
to snip at a later time.

And forgotten,
between the entwined legs in the mid-mornings,
and soft cradling hands
that cup
cheeks and chins and bright eyes,
left tumbling like dizzy lovers
in the post-coital wash, the machine
catches it.

What a tender tug.
At first, a spinning,
a back and forth unstitching,
then, oh.
The strap has fallen,
the shirt has split,
and all the pieces fall, wet and tearing.

make lemon meringue.

or the breath suppressed, fall
against the silver rounded tins;
caressed in papers, discarded,

breathe.
dizzying citrine; clementines.
nothing quite

like pomelo, crushed
tears in mouth,
all tart
and wounding.

______________________________


When life gives you lemons, you make lemon meringue.

Or you could roll the lemon on a thick wooden cutting board and slice it; pour a shot of sunny, reposado tequila, and break the salt and bitter lime tradition. Or, you could let the lemons sit in the plastic bag in the fridge until you knew what to do with them. They’d smell only of sweet, fresh lemons as they fermented, sweaty with chill and condensation on their bumpy zest. Lemons forgotten, you could go the grocer’s. You could let your stiff back fall lightly against the shelves of silver rounded tins, all caressed with papers, as you inhaled, your legs unsteady in the heady citrine breaths of clementines and tangelos.

Then you buy the fruit, peel the loose skin, tenderly, and eat the sweet flesh.

When life gives you a lover, after things break with your last one, you should make love.