for each time we incarnate by Fray Narte

i will sign pieces of myself away in between the lines of a poem,

until my skin yields to your bated, midnight breaths.

in your arms, i am the world in pre-apocalypse –

and all the stars it birthed, once primordial – ephemeral, now

soiled and braided in my hair, ready to fall apart at your feet.

in your arms, i am a virgin nymph, pacing, waiting for a baptism,

i am sick of licking rust off my wounds, love,

i await your tender hands.

i am the gaps in history caught in the losing side –

in the side erased – buried.

but bury me in your skin once more:

an arrow between your bosoms,

a sea glass at your sole.

i will sign pieces of myself away in between the lines of this poem;

i am a ghost in a white dress, lingering in thinly-veiled rooms –

take all of my haunted sighs away.

kiss me, until i am a pliant mess against your body.

kiss me, all liquid mercury lips, all apricot breaths, and delicate hands –

until it consumes you,

until you see me in the clearest, barest daylight,

and you’ll know:

i am the contradiction of both sanity and madness:

a poetess and her longings in their most prosaic state.

if this is what it means then,

to fall in love and stay and be yours,

i will sign pieces of myself away with total abandon,

they're yours for keeping, and claiming, and staining, my love.

i will break, yes, in slow moving fever dreams:

a wide-eyed girl, all wrecked and wonderstruck back on the ground,

but god — god, will i break for you

like it was my death —

my salvation.