by myself. My cleverest trick
was
to hold intimacy against bone
without telling it my name.
Like any
unloved thing, I don’t know
if I’m real
when I’m not being touched.
Because who am I but who
I am to someone else?
I know now the ways of
nameless
birds & the cost of a
life built
from waiting. I go to any
window
I please, bare-handed,
hovering
a/part. Watching when
devotion
becomes duty. When soft
becomes
stranger. Look. I was soft
once, &
then I was a stranger to
myself. No tender mouth is
worth
a slow death. No heart is
worth
the belly of a beast. The
secret is:
tender attends the heels of
bruises.
The secret is: be bigger
than your alone.