Aria for Need
The night is a parched dog and I quench it, skate my feet so you will not hear me
peel my toes from the kitchen’s stained linoleum.
Skin: the first thing to catch and caution. The sudden way mine reddens a perfect tell. I make like my desires walking around you, watch you from the bedroom doorway while the summer air settles its mouth
upon my neck. I don’t hate it, the feeling, the wanting for others it brings.
I say “others,” I mean people you could become if you cared for me enough. I love you
which means I’ve become lethal to my own happiness. My chest is full
of fingers struggling to undo laces, straps, belt buckles in the dark. A stuttering sound,
like someone about to give a secret away. How different to search for you in these dreams now.
Aria
You remind me there is a reason for singing when you tell me not to—leave, leave me to my fantasies, the most naked part of me the inside of my throat. Soft geography. Inspired in lust as well as rebellion. Even when you are not on stage there is a man I sing to.
Notes ringing with the tenor
of my bones. Draped over a fainting couch, the seams of my bodice threatened
but not yet torn; kneeling by the one I desire, an applicant
for love. My song is not what I am,
but all I have left. In dictionaries I look up aria hoping someone will notice, write
see: supplication, see also: begging
at the end. Each time the descriptor: an accompanied, elaborate melody sung…
a single voice. Aria means by yourself
but not alone. A mouth opened
to the listening dark, emitting a tune
so lovely that later I will hum it. And you will find me, set your lips upon mine, so you don’t have to hear.
You Leave Me to Weep
at dogwoods. The petals of their blossoms split at the ends, curled like burning paper. If you were here, you would say
this is just nature, beg me not to look for a different reason, insist
it will get me nowhere. I imagine
your hand outstretched, its promise
of forever slowly returning to your pocket, a flower out of season. Months after you’ve gone, I think how dangerous it was for others to say we were ever inevitable. We smiled
in agreement. Aware that what we had was just another fate of the body, we still believed it good. Beautiful things bloomed from your mouth. You looked at me one day and said dogwood would make a perfect middle name for a boy. The corners of your mouth turned and for a minute I expected tears. This was the edges of what we had dying. This, I realize now, was nature.
After a bad dream, I find myself consoled
by a man whose voice strains to sing me back to him
His is a song that will end mid-verse. Fall asleep before I do.
I listen until he slows like the tired spring
of a music box. Whatever sings, needs,
and whatever needs does so specifically. Even the simple call of an unseen bird,
just two notes descending, a white key’s distance between each other.
I lean my head out, pitch my whistle. The bird repeats, and I smile
like we’ve spoken. I’m sure
I have not fooled it. A song is not noble,
giving, it is not grace content with itself.
A song is not single, it is hope for a lover.
The lover is a response, an answer.
Answer could mean reason,
but now things are getting dangerous.