by Shana Huang
Lover embracing, tracing your
fingers down my spine, unraveling pages of being entwined
by tales that no longer exist, bound by death
becoming sweetness becoming daydreams lingering beyond boundaries
that efface my body in the cold warmth of blood.
Harvested like another seed, lover your eyes devour me.
Blue sun sky high, I drink the lungs of twilight
below branches where you hear the bellows of shadows
from gallows that live on bleached palms.
In the silence a song begins, soft as your nails
on my breasts when you sculpted them out of
opal when you forged them in the hollow fire of my tears.
Lover, I do not need much: I am insatiable.
I am the rusted crown left behind in the kingdom
ruined by itself. I am the redwood robbed of air,
praying to the loggers for relief. I was born in a faceless
ocean, where murdered stories fill the pillars of every
street. Stories living in minds locked by lies—
things I tell myself in the stillness of dusk. Lover
a question written in your eyes, pondering the spheres
on my body, thoughts I keep hidden in my sleeve.
Lover caressing my broken neck as I become
another distant memory.
