of hand and hip

Again you bite off more than you can chew, and you choose swallow where spit would do. You can either choke out or struggle on, working for every word you loose, aching for the only thing you own. I would admire that about you, but that is my way too. I start out knowing how bad it is broken. I begin the story knowing how things get worse. The story always wants to keep something of the getting told. The eyes never really bigger than the gut.

So it is one more melting of the moon, another circle around the sun. The starstruck stagger, the mayday dance. The whole mess undone again and again. The furtive touch, the hush and crowd of hand and hip. The languid days, the breathless nights. Moments that entangle the bones of eternity, time nothing next to the salt of your kiss. Another memento stitched to my shadow, the daylight playing out the usual procession of flies and feathers. Another season of drought or drowning, never even a slip or fever in-between.

The romance always burns away, scorch marks everywhere. The weight of remember, the wait of want, all these words we leave when we forget our long residence. The horse before the cart, the flesh before the soul. You wish once, and the rest is surrender. You look to the sky to hold you to the ground. It is prayer, it is process, it is patching the holes in the weave of the world. The warm sun grasps you skintight, your teeth both bite and smile. You follow every hunger, always the answer, always the ghost.