Into the Breach

The only motive that there ever was was to...keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.
Jeffrey Dahmer

I pull into the field & cut the engine.

It's simple: I just don't know
how to love a man

gently. Tenderness
a thing to be beaten

into. Fireflies strung
through sapphired air.

You're so quiet you're almost

tomorrow.

The body was made soft
to keep us

from loneliness.
You said that

as if the car were filling

with river water.

Don't worry.
There's no water.

Only your eyes

closing.
My tongue

in the crux of your chest.
Little black hairs

like the legs
of vanished insects.

I never wanted the flesh.
How it never fails

to fail
so accurately.

But what if I broke through
the skin's thin page

anyway
& found the heart

not the size of a fist
but your mouth opening

to the width
of Jerusalem. What then?

To love another
man--is to leave

no one behind

to forgive me.

I want to leave
no one behind.

To keep
& be kept.

The way a field turns
its secrets

into peonies.

The way light
keeps its shadow

by swallowing it.