I wanted to breathe the sage of your lung
               and rip open the sanctuary of our what-ifs
to cleanse our backs as we faced

                                       opposite sides, branches in mine
                               that weaved our faces in lapses.
                                       Sharp shadows beneath your eyes, chin, years ahead.

        The canvas wall you whispered to. Lines and shapes concaved
        me into child, and my father placing a cellar
spider into my palms and I am not afraid. My mother barely a touch

                and tied to grief. The width of your shoulder
                        and neck a section for my nose, my chewed cheek.
                A muscle with a name that sounds like a triangle learned in geometry

        or a Greek hero: trapezius, as if your sweat and skin beneath my mouth
               was both calculated and predestined. I’d replace the mattress
        but I’m cheap or broke. And anyways,

                                the fossil isn’t even the thing,
                                it’s the shape of it left behind.
                                        I am empty as summer

light against the floor’s grain. What you were
        was noise. My noise. They raise frequencies
        out in space just to confirm that a thing

                                without flesh can churn and collide
                                        and not mean something more
                                        than that. Images of galaxies

                based on temperatures and chemicals. I’m not directly speaking
                        so much as I am excavating. There’s this
       making. A collection of skin beneath nails. A machine I’ve labelled Eyelid

and leave on while away. You know, I could
        sleep, I could sleep for such a long time.