I remember you nude, descending
a staircase, the Times glued
to your hip. What was that four-letter
word beginning with “o”? Oh, I
remember your pentimento skin,
a collage of silent wounds that spoke
to my tongue in the pink moments
of dawn, your stitched body,
a patchwork quilt of stop-gap
bloodletting. But too often you
covered truth with hope: “Can I
escape the mechanized chime
of church bells that take their toll
on each dying day?” Oh, I wish I
had tasted the gasoline in your veins,
believed in the violence of hope,
drowned in the rich delta of tears.
Maybe I’d’ve risen like the salmon-pink
moon over the radius of your pain
and burrowed like a winter squirrel
into the geometry
of your sorrow and love.