 The world in the calm before the storm I was like human I had skeleton and skin that gleamed like jasper and Bread bruises more rich than blossoms and spring. I Wanted to control the rain. I Wanted to kill the feathered serpents and me. I bore my claws and gnashed my fangs to be human was searing glass and a furnace But you you were so beautiful in the soft petals of your flesh. I Didn't want the world from you, but in the night you laid across my bed and assumed the particular beauty of moonlight The fear of never containing you left me adrift for days. I Said break my cocoon body and salvage what's inside before it's too late Say this word Raptor rupture captured Crack me open like the ripest melon collect me with the shovels of your palms and hand me out to anyone with calluses and a shoulder for weight To be one thing is to know singe marks. Let me live 100 lives But you turned away from my gaping arms. I Splintered alone against stone and tide until I became like human again melted melded forged anew bewildered by the possibility Carving a self of red clay in birch wood Trying eyes for new proximity to light Tearing apart each time at night I remembered how to sleep again by sucking on grains of sand Impolishing slowly learned how to speak to snakes and holds my burning body and assemblage in process Okay, I actually wrote this piece when I was in college But I found it in my desktop and I was like I got to say this out loud one more time This is called love letter from the desert to the moon What has become of us? I Woke in the middle of the night Cracked and frenzied with fossils in my veins and limestone beneath my nails. I dreamt of darkness I Dreamt I lost you among the stars shimmering beaded curtains Filled with gemstone arthropods and diamond twins had you dropped off the horizon Had you failed the night because you could not face me My spine stamped with the footsteps of so many travelers My tears dried to ancient riverbeds the vastness of your absence gaped at me My mouth tasted of ash as my cringdom as my kingdom crumbled into clay But in my terror I awoke and none of it was true You were there haggard Crescent Staring down from such a distance Now I lie beneath your silver sheets in shiver without solace. I forget your scent Do you smell the way ice tastes? Did we fit together ever? The question is a canyon in me that howls with the wind and I cannot quiet it I Sift the smoothest rocks between my fingers and close my eyes trying to remember Hmm How are you? The beginning was bare The severing of dead bows ghosts of breath crystallizing in the dining room Slates of sunlight falling in the bedroom It was a skeletal season a lean bone weighing season of waiting for the birds to return The spring was harsh Nothing bloomed as it was supposed to the unruliness of rhizomes when we were promised shelter Buds unfurling into fists Flowers only opened once in the breast of night before falling like concessions Every inch of growth reeked of something lost The summer was a season of thirst all ash under the tongue scarcity of water so many dreams belly up in the tall grass Everything was so flammable toxins coming to surface sweating through the pores Nothing about summer echoed with infinity the frenzied heat sought to escape itself over and over Now fleshy gourds emerge from Sutterfuge Hardly leaves pock marks with tears still reaching for the next day. I Hold the rotting old growth in my hands the filth the meaty tendrils Wrapping around my wrists. I rip them at the roots taking note of what could never be the same