weathervane

"I would like to kiss you,
very slowly on the mouth
as soft as a sunrise."

I have a pen between my teeth
and this is all I have written to you
in shaking letters. I have plasters on my fingers
like my goal is to keep my claws in,
when they are really there to keep my teeth out
and I have not washed my hair in days.
I am the parody of the beast and my letters to you
are fumbled and dropped and bitter peeling
behind my teeth. jammed into the gums, and I
cannot write anything that does not growl with a lie.

I want, I want to kiss you, just once,
just one single time to know what your face feels like
under my hands, I want to swallow you up just once,
just once, but even as I write the promise I am crossing it out
knowing in my turning stomach that your lips are a firelighter
and I am a forest, knowing that you are the feast and I, I -

do not have the good in me to do anything
but call you messiah and drink your bones down,

do not have the soul in me to drag my fingers over your arms
and hold my mouth shut and blink you penance through my lashes

do not have anything left in me but the want the want
the screaming empty want of your laughter in my mouth.

"I would like to kiss you,
very softly, and I would like to never stop."

The paper balls in my fists like the moon
on the horizon
and as I scatter the inkstained snowballs of failures past
around my feet I wish I had the hate in me
to tell you these things or the love in me
to crack open my sternum like shaking knuckles
pressed tight together and let you go.

I am in love with you like I am lightening
and you have your umbrella held high to stop the wind.