In a dream: cold rains falling
in reverse out the autumn earth
I felt my body & my body was saltwater
I helped a doe loose a fawn from itself,
branch its flesh, surrender
half its heaviness to sun & breath with a force
as hot & mute as lightning
but the child—I held it in my hands—
the child was stillborn
In a dream I touched my loneliness, I smelled it
it had the texture of unkempt wool, the scent of semen
& I decided to keep it
Under earth, I braided my hair with lanolin,
let my coils riot like roots. I believed
my own end, no cruelty. Every soul
learned winter’s bite but me
& I was happy
no no
I was not happy, I wanted to run
through the storm-soaked fields again
& see cold branches
standing naked as a man
& tell my mother I’m sorry
for our twinned sorrows
I wanted to shout my own name over & over—
for once, it felt like a strawberry on my tongue,
that firm & real—& I could taste
the memory of ambrosia
o god it was there it was mine again
see, death is a kind of longing
just as longing is a kind of death
I am learning to love myself a little better here
& that means knowing
what I deserved. I deserved something
much brighter than this
In a dream the history I am made of
is not the history I am made of.
I am neither a sin nor a series
of endings. As I won’t be.
In that world, I never staggered under sour
bloodbeads of pomegranate—
maybe there is even no such thing—
so when I look in the mirror
all I see is my life
performing the very action of life
my face more than a face,
a consummation & a radicle
a nucleus, a wellspring
I never wanted to wake up
but the earth
taught me many things,
including the necessity of closing a parenthesis
including that it is possible
to survive one’s own death,
though you must be altered
I could almost die
for wanting me
All this light. My blue heart
thrashes like a fish