I would like to be the spaces in your thoughts
So that I may catch your silence between my teeth
Like a moon-white virginity.
The parentheses of your mouth is the punctuation
Of my poetry, and mine does not exist.
I am a lack of all that is necessary
And it would be easy to beg that I am not here
At all. Can you find me?
I am gone once you speak my name,
And my return is the slow sincere slip of a mind
Into the dark. Regard this as no less than a confession
Of my sins. It is only by sweet mishap that I have been borne
At all. When you’ve been snuck into the world
As old as I, it is difficult to conceive
How you still have any years left.
Take me for what you see: I am akin to the memories
That have been lost and the skin knotted
As root-sunk oaks. You deny me my reality
For the sake of yours but that will not fill
The empty drops between my eyes.
Tell me how I am deeper than the pit of a rose
And how I have peeled back my compassion
Like the silent tears of a bloom.
Flaked away in simple splits,
You should never uncover the facets of my cause.
I am no diamond.
You will say that your hands are tied
But mine are the loops of fingers strewn through yours.
I know your lies as though they have been spoken
Into clear air while mine sink muddied
Into bogs of my thoughts.
We are not the truth, you nor I.
And yet we catch against plain skin
With maturity that reeks from my aged pores
And yours but nearly born.
I do not heed that you drone of love,
That you drone of care,
That you drone of things which I cannot bear.
Should we have met in air,
I would have been weighed down
By heavy thoughts and you may have flown.
Leave me alone.
I will not reach until half past ten
While you are the time that keeps its ticking.
First hand, second;
Around my wrists time’s fingers wrap.
Keep me here, keep me here.
Prisoner of your affections,
The deliverance of my release.