Look at it

Don’t look at us

I mean my tongue, that restless hook

Dragging everything towards me, but never myself

 

This house is not my home

And the truth is not what I desire today

I want to begin where the lie ends

But even that, i must earn with my own blood

 

I throw myself at God

The same way I throw myself upon men

Half in longing, half in proof that I am still human

Etching at the edge of myself for love

As my body imitates the shape of a hook

 

Look at it

Don’t look at us

I mean the truth that stands upright

I mean the truth that does not kneel to console

That truth without perfume, that truth that’s just bare and breathing

Without the soft tire of mercy rolling over what must burn

 

So I am writing and putting out an ad into the world

To any man who finds me before I do, please come quickly

Come with your trembling sensations 

Come with your ruins, and let’s make bread

 

Let the truth fall

With no cushion beneath it, if it shatters

Then it was never truth enough

 

And if she asks, tell it

She said it

She whose mouth is a violin

Tuned to the pitch of grief

Playing a note only the dead can hold

 

The dead are as the living are

Two sides of a single promise

Warrantied to return, again and again

Through the bodies of women who remember themselves without us

 

Today I am the table

Name me and you may pass me

My tongue still a hook

And I am losing this image as i try to make it hold

So hang me by the toes in the wind, show me the air

Let the clear sky rectify my directions

 

And if Amber still wishes to play the victim

After dragging my kindness through the mud

Let her unroll her own red carpet

Let her learn what it costs to call a woman broken

 

I am sewing new moons now

From the fabrics of old tears

I am weeping the rivers that I believe I’ve outgrown

 

I am sending dandelions like messengers

And I am praying for the word

But the word does not pray for me

I am everything and nothing all in the same breath

I am the exile of a beginning and the inhale of an ending

Might also be the God who both made me

And made me ask why

Mother would slap me if she heard me claiming to be God

But I say this with my chest, I might be a small god myself

 

I am human, after all

And all I want is everything.