I.

Before her
love was
tender regard of an other
in the cold face of an other
and I lived in the margins of death's book.

Her art, her blurt,
her intrusion into me
is still now, still present.

It is in the word I want.
It is how she pulls me away from wrong.
It shimmers in what she spills, her hands upon me.

It is her firm offer
to my troubled heart.
Her love is stone-play
with all hands
building,
intimate,
and also ex cathedra:
she wants me to look up.
 
I feel her,
the prickle-skin
around a rip, a small tear,
on her thumb.
I worry at it, a pain lasting a few days

and I feel cringe and twinge damnit
for days
her little scissor
pinch
is my pinch

and for her whole life
I give the lamb sign of protection
slowly, over her,
for sake of her slumber
for her pillow breath
I squeeze my deepmost sinew self
as if a certain and positive boy
and I burn with
and tender up
my greatest swear:

to protect her mâché fingers
her bump-skin back
her splintery
ice almost cobalt
smithereen eyes

her Pierrot eyes as she smiles
smiles a big smear of
oxytocin'd honey
from inside a hungry mouth
a smile all teeth and gums

and all of us
–not me alone–
hoot ape hoot at
her honey-smack smile
her radiative smile igniting
all human smiles.

After her I understand

how art lives,
–not meaning alone–
in the trembling limns,
the ascension and descension of,
our letters and
in the lie of all letters and

how words are wet foals
who already know how to stand.

And my love sounds out the wordshapes for me
in death's book
I nod along,
lulled, alive

and I re-start the count
I count out my nine months
with art not words

I walk with the boy
across the shards of glass
and count with him
every terrible hour

I do not shield his eyes
or any other impossible thing
because this is death's book
for all and all of us
but I rest a strong hand
on his small white hairs
kitsey nape
and bend to whisper:

she will come
and she will come
and she will come

and I tap a new beat
with my own mâché fingers
upon his small red fingers:

you will live
you will live

II.

her womb is gone
her tubes cut
where does it go when I come inside?

after they   
cut away cancer and
plop on the steel dish and
sew the simulacrum
the soft weeping purse
where does it go, what I put in?
If not a cradle
a swaddling
a reed basket
then our must-do is just us
it is just me
and her.

III.

Every new line here
digs a trench in my neck:
 
All I do is dream the same dream
my teeth tap tac tic each other and
every night my eyes encrust  
behind my nervous lids
each lime-color pin-dot dreams
the same dream:

I am lost in another place
any other place and
I cannot remember the number and
start in a direction and
I walk and walk
to find her
my life now

and after miles of old places and former worlds
I am no closer
still lost
just walking
uncertain.

This is my private death, every night
the place of dust and burn and refinery stink
the old familiar book
lost in the margins each and every night

but I wake up with her.

IV.

She and I disintegrate together
side by side
pulp by bloody pulp
day following day and  
my love offers me a note and
tells me to read the whole text and
to hold his small hand until I feel him
feel the trembling pulse in his thumb and
make art not just meaning and
don't be a fool and
and live and
feel her

feel a tender regard of an other.