Anatomies

I lay myself

    against these sentences

not knowing

       if it is against myself

winter crawled in on fingers

    and toes

stood before me

           and I waited

before me      appeared

    a state of affairs

would become     me

against cold cement

      everything’s winter

the air moves steadily on

cement is

      as pages are

I press myself 

   into them    stand before

the flattened image

       and wait

a numerically different

   carbon copy

   folded crosswise

       Repeat

I lay myself 

     against knowing

myself         and

push into the page again

    still        knowing

what it is to wait

I am reminded of

           your hands, skin, the touch

the reaching of hands

        the climbing of feet

the presence of your chemistry

         stretched out in front of me

lying within view

                        the composite of you

and me                the chemistry of

        you and me

                            I prefer the insides

the darkness         the memory in the

  longing              I prefer those things

and the softness which resides in

         your smile, lips

the gums which hold it all together

               in front of me

I envy the blood        and ventricles

             that comprise   your tissue

I shall miss you           longingly

I shall miss           the reaching

    of hands     the climbing of feet

no more shall I awake and manifest

   myself in me               I shall eat your

manifestation of you         and breed

         the children of our dark insides

the light pulse  the swinging beneath

        the composition

             beneath the chemical occurrence

of us

I smile,     aware of what

   holds it together

          I smile on the inside

I make up for it in blood

   and my bones have decided to

honor that                 and the way

we comprise each other

            my bones have decided

to keep the tissue for the harvest

I am climbing beneath you

       reaching for skin that

cannot be reached by the physical

       the touch       and the boundaries

are defined      but not well

   and I am reaching for the

breathlessness of our chemistry

                     I am reaching

out to you

          for you

you lie in wait

       our wait is that

               of chemistry

of our composition

(excerpt from longer poem)