If I do not speak of you

If I do not

speak of you

part company with the calcium in my bones

ligaments and tendons

dearticulate our fusion

unpick the stitch

reduce to oil once more

our burnishing

if I untie, dismantle, cleave

unweave

scrub away

the dust of my soul

wherein you reside

filling it whole

I am left my love

with a shadow ill substantial

unknown and unfamiliar

for it was your

hand I felt against me

your face I beheld

too long I have gazed only

at the circumstance of your make

thinking myself a different race

escaping into your darkness

when I burned within my own

thin shell

you wrapped yourself a hundred times

around my need for union

where you began and I end

nothing can anymore divide

even the wind even the sea

even time and hunger and fire

even birds of prey who believe

the desolation of my shape

incomplete

if I do not

speak of you

my language

my tongue

may turn and catch in rust

clacking only a hollow sound

for you fill me

like the swell and surge of saline

roosting her storm

you fill me

like burned fields herald life in autumn

you fill me

like a flame will reflect our tomorrow

it is you and if I cannot speak of you

let us leave off this pretense, belief time will heal

a rift as jarring as breath is necessary

instead, take that plunge

long and withheld beneath waves

for surely in this glassy netherworld

I see you ahead, beckoning me to rejoin

and burst on hissing sea-foam

like mythic horses left to roam undisturbed

do not ask me

do not ask me

if I do not speak of you

I am equine in my haste

ever chasing

your wild

gallop ever

forward