in the beginning, there wasthe body. a you, finite enoughto reside, compact, in the confinesof space & time –

                                         but before there wasa you, there was the empty. that resides strongin the body. a longing. a definition – can the bodyexist without the Loneliness it counters

                                         & inhabits –

yes – the Loneliness grew strong withinyou. made a world of you, dark& vast as the beast that guards it;became a copper-lunged thing;a thing that sings without breathing,strips the music from your littlebones; winged beast of metallicclaw & its anthem of shredding wire:all the delicate machinery builtto contain you –but in this reality, you are tame& young. small. hollow-boned, yet shatterproof in allyour body’s oblivious histories.you cannot know the way you split galaxieswith a single breath; the universesyour hands can unlock in a single strike –your history, a petty matchbox that igniteswith friction & hands, always the hands;you are oblivious of the scientistsbehind the screens, who claimthey built you; observing the specimenof you – who built a tower in you,the Lonely that makes you retreatinto yourself; who wrote the booksyou could never find yourself in; booksthat claim they saved you & built allthe delicate machinery & wingedbeasts that strip you of flight & sweetentropy;                  wingless child –                                the body is an infinity                                you have yet to unravel –

in this reality, the story unwrites itself:my lover un-ghosts me after i swallowconfession; the word bisexual unmakesitself at home in me & i do not leavemy house; the clear liquid runs backinto its bottle like a river might; my motheris not yet a mountain: the avalanche sweepsup her body, unlearning & inhaling its anxieties;she’s a good girl, a good southern girl:the future grandchildren of my mother’s sentencesretreat to a hypothetical womb; her blessing, notformed, hangs heavy in the thick air; my queerness& self-loathing unwind, like DNA strands –

*what of the body isn’tan unbecoming –*

i uncork a bottle of liquid galaxies& tonight i am my mother’s child;a boy i find pretty presses his tongueagainst my front teeth & i forgetmyself;                            i later findmy self                            alone beneaththe star                           light & thisis not                               the reality wherethe boy loves himself back, nor is ita story where the boy needn’t hatehimself to be worthy of touch –

*

tonight i am a thousand miles north& i do not call my mother. i do notsmell the ethanol through her phone-static; i do not hear the same apologyunwinding itself from her breathlike collapsing rosary beads; like allahyerhama whispered at a wake; but i dohear her say i love you, you have to knowi love you. & is that not its own funeralquiet? her hands, kissing the bottle’s rimsubmerging in the absence –

*         

say the sun forgave itself the inevitabledisappearance; say the ocean forgavethe moonlight’s lonesome pull –say the fluid forgave its captor,          history –& even that can be its own shelter;maybe in that reality, i would be,instead, child of Thales: descendentof salt & molecule; everything i touch,spiraling into a galaxy of droplets,           dissolving –