long
and every time i pull you down
it’s into a mess of sunflowers.
it’s less about the yellow
and more about dirt — thick damp soil,
a bed, a solid place
beneath the sky.
what’s the explanation for your
fingernails.
how do they work?
white edges, smooth, round,
big dry
hands,
all that digging, never
a trace of dirt.
i was re-born at the precipice of
your certainty.
it’s a layer of thick black topsoil,
just rained on,
chock-full of
earthworms —
night crawlers.
afraid of the light.
have you heard
you can cut them in half?
that they have five hearts?
that they breathe through their skin?
there is so much that you don’t know.
there is so much dirt in my skin.
when we’re still
“figuring it out”,
a deep kiss
is as good as an endgame.
what’s the world of a morning
when the night, the night,
is still an ember fire at my door.
fried brown sky,
4am worth killing
for. we’re awake and i hate
everything.
except your scapulas.
the way they make your skin
stretch.
worms make compost and compost
is wet, and heavy, and it wants something.
we’re alike, in that way.
when it seems like the right time,
i spend hours and hours
in front of the fridge,
opening and closing.
little light bulb,
on and off again.
with every quiet repetition,
i jack the sun up another inch.
when the sun arrives i’m
spent. the clouds move in
like a wall. between its impossible whiteness
and me, the ground,
drift a few wispy grey nothings
like lesions. white sky. under/over marble sky.
earthworms, left in the light too long, become
paralyzed.
