All Of You

I learned to speak without using my voice.
I learned to be a passage and not a point.
You turned to a doll made of stone and I carried you.
My face defied gravity in whirlpools of smiles.

I carried the softness of your skin,
the hidden severity of your voice,
the gaping wound in the gap of your lips,
the cyclone pit in your inviting eyes.

Love felt like sitting with nails in my side.
Love felt like pulling the flesh from my throat.
Love felt like corals, deep in cold water.
Love felt like mumbling one to ten thousand.

You aren’t the moon or the wintry cold,
the echoing streets with their glistening light,
the wind blowing through these dry, empty cities,
the animals moaning in heat or in spasms.

I filled a balloon up only to empty it.
A needle sucked all the life from the earth.
Your carpals and phalanges jut from clay,
a prehistoric forest, littered with your skulls.

We don’t know what’s in each other’s mouths.
I will never leak from your open cracks.
Marked for execution, stalked by the invisible,
coins lodged somewhere inside our thighs,

in your oversized coat, in your puffy white blouse,
in all of the layers between you and the world,
in memories of being pinned by your eyes,
interstellar vacuums wandering our chymes.