My life is an exercise in patience and forgiveness and deep, unyielding self-love, and sweet grateful yielding to the hand of the universe. So soft, so careful, so much the teacher for those who ought to be taught. 

The passing forward, the pay it forward of every single scratch, every sting, every scar. Every method to undo, every dream undone. All the sugar making you sick, deathsick, can’t take away the pain. The pay-n. The pay-n forward of shame and secrets and stories from another language. 

The protection, the control, the self-protection, the self-control, the armor and the weapons of choice. The noise and the sweet, the rotting of teeth, the sword and the sheath, the gone too far. 

The voice in your head, the voice in your throat, the you that the universe expresses. A singular expression. A voice. 

The sound of learning and loss and the groan of lovemaking and lietelling. The leaky refuge of another ship. The lonely safety of following your star, being your captain, the push of children. The devil’s birthmark on your neck your deck, the cage of promises ajar.

The neck. The tendon and skin, the sin. The breathing within. The swallowing the shallow swallowing and the taste of purity and pausing to remember, to forget. Bring him to me.

Each climb a noose, every plan at loose, falling without end. Hanging to every word, every drag of the bow, making music in the empty peace, not wanting any soundtrack but our own, alone. 

The skulls and skullptures the souls and sculptures. The cheekbones, the deep sockets, the lips the hips the sunken trench of the lovelorn, the not. 

The sweat under sweaters the layers the wools the eyes the heathers. 

The rain in our umbrella, the amber Spaniard, the Danish dewdrop, the hair brushed from the face and tucked where the whispers outcrop.

The strings, the piles of strings, the lengths the wag of applause, the weave and the woven, the cleaved and the cloven, the open and closed in. 

A mouth full of lime, a Peruvian swine is a fish on a twine. Each certainty cooked in a citrusy stew. Each heart killed and fried. Each woman left behind when you died. Each child. Each chide. 

The saints gather maggots and feed them to sin, to kill sin from within. Each larvae, each embryo an echo of your soul and an echo of that one last note. The worm that dangles the hair that tangles, your fist contracting as you get the gist. And give the new list of demands and improvements. Pave, save, gave it all and do it all over again. A road to be ridden, a ribbon at the wrists, a cheap tie, a star you can touch. The unstoppable, the undroppable, the violin in the sea the youness in me. 

Your bladder at birth, your ladder of worth, the sales in his eyes and the bullshit and lies and his self-deception, and his spiraling replies.   

A straight line home, a desert alone. Asleep at night, dreams on the flight. A soup a tea a chocolate hot strawberry. Your face, knee lace the sacred and the sewn. A goose a goat a voyage alone. The creak of the sails in the windless candle moan.