Lately, I haven’t wanted my body
or any of its carnivorous desire
because you tried to stretch me into another night
while I slept. I trusted you
despite the blood in your mouth.
I believe you believe you meant me no harm,
yet violence was the first way you learned to hold anything.
Still as dusk, now, every time my body stretches
back into a wet horizon,
to moan the night into a clean opening,
I am repulsed by the language my legs
& mouth & all my openings render me into.
I want to open the body into a new language
& so I return.
Why do any of us return
to that which has promised to slaughter us?
We met each other in an empty field of this night—
our deliberate, brief weight &
I didn’t offer myself as sacrifice,
or offer myself as anything.
The night made us both ravenous
both tender raptures both humble mouths

that asked the other to be absolved of our merciless hunger

it was not me parting my body to fit around you
it was not you pulling me apart until a new kingdom iserected in your name

what I mean to say is this:
some of us fuck because we want a story to tell

because we want something more beautiful than us to choose us

so much of your intimate life has been devoted
to what war you pull out of yourself
to level another landscape how many times have you had to prove
to yourself you were not prey
but what thrashes in the night & keeps blood awake
you: who is too strong or too proud to acquiescence to know the splendor of becoming
undone
to say I was night & the field was inside me lush & green & bashful as our hands
a healing that delivers us to & away from ourselves this story is not about you taking this repulsion
from me but about this yearning which both opened me & nearly killed me
I don’t know why I want you with an unending thirst
maybe it is to fuck the me I desire in you
Come. Let us negotiate the space between wet folds
in a night that promises us no return
to what we once were let us both be prey for one another