In this fairytale, too, there is a castle. On a rise above a river. You enter in a cycle. The dew is come in words.
The grasp of the offered hand a falling in to spin, craned sequence, flashing before, as if. Curious, curious. The moment you knew everything – when she lifted her eyes from the plate. Her gaze was a solar wind, stripping. All the years I – The horse of your heart.
*
She is the gape of a second. A glyph you remembered how to read. The other lovers rattle their sabers. They don't see WHAT. She's not really THAT. It's all a cumulus din you wade around in when she leaves for years. Her words are a dry arroyo. It is all an ice pack, novocaine, delerium tremens, the haze left after a high fever. Until she comes back.
*
If she were any closer, you'd eat her for dinner, you think. As it is, you're starving. And not. You weather this all with seeming good humor. Write notes to amuse yourself. You have become too earnest, trying so hard to mean something important. Watch the drain and hear your stomach growl. Negroes make me hungry, too, she says. You need an explanation but say nothing to this boastful non sequitur. You want to amuse her with your bones.
*
You watch the men march on television. She is a letter in the envelope of your body. A general with your father's mouth sputters over documents. Something about obstruction and leaning. You crease. She unfolds. The bold paragraph in the dimple of her back is blue.
*
Everything the same terrible color.
Gather in her breasts like sails. Like nets and draw deep. The hand pumps between. A link to turning inside, out.
All the displaced lust in the world would not pacify this quest. The fist in the center of your chest is turning. Everything behind it is wet and begging. Your ears pop in the tunnel. Fragrances of sound emerge dully. Postulate, postulate, gratiating consciousness. Around the first the scar tissue thickens. You were born with that wound. It's getting deeper.