Poetry

clothes hanging 

on a body 

 

Small, some say, 

sugarless,         pale 

 

pulled forward 

like the thought of a question 

 

like the readying 

for a fall 

 

there are times 

when all it wants 

is the sunlit gaze 

of an afternoon 

                          awake i 

in the pines. 

 

there are times  

when its skin   growls  

for the years, 

that seeped  

forget-me-not blue 

through 

heavy 

 

August 

 

coats. 

 

times, when this body lifts its lungs 

in thanks  

for another rotation  

                       because it can, because it will. 

 

moments, 

when it refuses  

to merely,  

be seen: 

 

a song that returns to you like water 

         

 

              five stubborn fingerprints on your shoulder 

 

 

                                    a necklace resting on the petal-like memory of a scalpel 

 

Stay, 

 

                Stay, 

 

                                     Stay.