Inside

Singing ships

The sway

Like a song bird’s wings

Dried in the sun, ready to mystify me with its magical flight

Bowing, bending

Her halls are rivers

Not concrete, not iron bars

But art

Art that swam and stretched and stood tall

Alive

Who could say these visions were building or simple boats?

Standing under great arches claiming these were nothing but floors to walk on

These desert dunes

Electric highways

Their bones exposed, contorted and breathing

Reaching out arms and fingers and feet

To defy construction and make movement

She will live inside these breezeways

The curves of her mouth lay wide in winding stairwells

The lean of her waist, the part in her teeth

Like the sill of a window hung defiantly over deep waters

Levitating lifts

In your magic hat we appear and disappear

Behind water

Behind celestial doors

And found somewhere inside you

In memory of Zaha Hadid (1950-2016)

Brown Bird

A scar on her ankle

What clipped bird’s wings

What poured this milky skin

Who shaped these small hands

Her mousey perfection

I can only imagine the sight of sweat weaving between her breasts

Toes poking out between thread and buckles

Who meets between her thighs

Lifts her at her ribs and tongues sweet lips, and hips, and waist

Who gets to know this beautiful normal?

Her modesty, her simplicity

Symmetry so precise its blind

Once seen now cannot be unseen

But I could have past her over suns and moons and I

Would have never thought her a gem to prize

Now I sit trying to hear instead of see

My body working against me to flush my face

To bend me

Wild Fruit

Fingers stained purple with wild fruit

Who cared the name

The lace of my Easter dress caked with summer mud

The powder of worn paths dusted my feet

My shins

Knees skinned from shoeless bike rides to nowhere

Every tree climbed

My only fear, the dark

And what might lurk within it

Endless warm days dyed my hair the color of straw

My mother’s breast, my home

I rode her shoulders high

My hands woven in her parted hair

I, her Arabian

Her, my majestic elephant

Safe, though teetering above asphalt

I never asked where we’d end up

When we’d arrive

Who we’d be there

A passenger, dozing, counting clouds

We sang songs

We called the sun out from behind clouds

Licked sweet candy from our fingers

Laughed

Feet kick up on dashes and out windows

Picnics on patched grass

In my eyes she was god

I’d wake with the immediate instinct to find her lap

Sitting quietly, following the lines of her face

Not knowing what she was writing

Not knowing the color of the sky just before dawn

But she knew

She was lifting the looming anvil

And all I could see was the sun. 

Without

"I am a whore." "I am your whore"
I was relieved when he finally made me say it
The weight lifted
I said it again as he fucked me, touching my face.
Sweat dripping from him, he held me to look into his eyes
"I'll do whatever you want"
It might as well have been "I love you".
It is no longer sex for me, its hallucination
Its this moment where I am without.
Without fear, or shame. I have nothing.
No mind, no heart, I am only a body. A body that is only conscious and alive because he wills it.
To be lost.
Filling all of me.
He's an addict, a liar, selfish, unfinished
Emotionally destroyed
But in these moments I have no capacity for knowing.
I only have to offer exactly what he asks of me.
Between the riding crop, the flogger, and his ever-swinging hand I am comforted by the trophies I will carry.
He pauses
For a moment we catch eyes, remembering we still exist
He holds himself above me trapped
I wipe the sweat from his face
My fingers through his hair
He leans forward, his movements hesitant, more conscious
The feelings seeping in to fill the craved emptiness
He kisses me
Easy
And something sat inside it
A pit of something undisclosed but felt undeniably
I recognized it, like a memory dug up and all of a sudden vibrant and vivid
When we were particularly needing,
Particularly close and clinging to what was left, he'd look up at me with that sad desperation
The misery in longing for something he couldn't say
Knowing if he did he wouldn't have the means to hold it
There was a time I though this was love
Maybe it was
But its love you remember not that you keep
Not that stays
And even if it wanted to you'd never let it.