Digestion

I see that your journal has been a meal for a bookworm who has contentedly chewed a tunnel from your first days at university to the end.

your cold dew leaves a trail upon my skin,
and I bear witness to how your weight waits

to be seen by dawn, warmed by it, lightened
by it, even consumed by it; new day, I am told,

is a new beginning, but bereavement is a cycle

Sunday is the lord’s day and the lord
is my bed. I stay here, wrap
myself up, stretch my limbs out
like a starfish. There is no one else here
to take up room that is rightfully mine.

Tangaroa’s belly flattens, swells
into the bright blade. Light honed by a creeping moon
is the sharpest of all light, slipped glass

ruptures him – quickening mercury
beads through cold ink. At his edges, silvered

my partner makes me my favorite meal and every time it is better
he used to make shrimp scampi to impress girls and when I told him I hate shrimp I think he
knew there was nothing usual about this love

I’m the kind of secret no one knew how to keep
pain pine and deep, I was wintry red
lotto scratch off’s walkin’ along the highway
wishin’ I knew what life on the other side
every kind of other side – was really like