I have these phases where
I can’t handle being around people.
Don’t think I mean I’m
moody,
frustrated.
I’m disgusted.
The sight of human flesh and fat and form makes me vomit.
I shower for hours,
hoping to scrub away traces of my species
To erase my genes

Please.

When all that swooned me were the remnants of candle wax, the silk of the smoke curling around my fingertips, my sound struggling against it’s cage. Do you think it was just accident, then, that night with the moon’s breath thick against my neck, your tongue tripped into mine? Don’t you know my lips were long dry? Don’t you know they’ve kept quiet, mingling to one another to swallow back tastes past. Just thinking of the moment makes my mouth water. Pool, drip, sweat. Thirst. Even now, I drag my finger tips across the shallowed dips, what remains of my body and I am clung. Desperately, your murmurs heating my neck, your thought heating my thighs. What once called fragile is lost, as you’ve replaced every taste I can remember. And how could I possibly render anything but - a succulent peach, your taste, humid against my own. And don’t you ever wonder, love, what could possibly be an accident in such place as this? The ground nearly reverberates for us to touch.

These are the autumn nights
we learn from books

a Chinese moon
suspended in the sky

our bodies warm
and graceful in the dark

as if we had stepped sideways
into something

animal: the new scent on our hands
conjured from grass and water

and flecked with blood;
the gradual shift

from one form to the next
so visible in every glint and slide

it makes me wonder
why a soul would want

the same again,
why anyone would go

to life eternal
given all this sweet

proliferation:
salt to dreaming salt,

the long exchange
of memory and warmth

that guides the Arctic tern
from pole to pole

as surely as it guides us
to the bank.

There is nothing we know
for sure
and nothing much

we care to know
beyond this moment’s span,

the one thing we might have said
if we had to speak

is how the body
leaves itself behind

in rivers and storms,
caresses and empty rooms,

and each of us knows the other
as water knows

the bodies it transforms
and then surrenders:

fingers, the curve of the throat,
the windless

undertow of watergreen
and void

that waits to be re-entered
like a vow.

It makes me wonder
why we ever think

of anything
beyond this ebb and flow

In Kansas by John Burnside

Freedom lies in wait in the form of a big black truck and a little blue house

I’ve always thought hands were pretty.
I like yours,
Warm and real.
Steady.
My hands have always been icy,
I was once told people with cold hands are always nice.
It’s funny,
How fragile and childish my boney little hand looks in yours,
But I could get used to it