Moon blood arrives, and I wake in a pink puddle.

I try not to think of him—

I know the dark swelling of my heart always begins there—

I’m thinking only of his mouth,

And tasting the blood I have bitten

From the inside of my cheek,

And drinking some

Strange, faceless eroticism.

He is not pressed against me when I wake anymore,

Full of amorous honey,

So I am keeping my eyes shut

And kindling my legs against the mattress,

Asking to be squeezed inside of it.

I create the image of our bodies

Moving fatally toward each other,

Finally crushed into one unified monstrosity.

I’m afraid of this fantasy,

Because it is clear my ache for him is darker

And deeper than his for me.

I have wished to sup on moss and grubs with him.

I have wished for him to charge his body with mine.

I have wished for my hands to be his soft delicate palms

And his gentle fingers.

I have cursed him never to find

A more alluring or feral pair of eyes than these.

Mostly I have dreamed for us to rule and disobey each other,

Like the body and the moon.

Still, I really want to kill myself

When I think too long on his mouth.

I have to stare into the mirror

And forget its shape and color.

I have to curl myself into a fabulous snail

And pretend I am a rationalist,

And fill my head with these thoughts:

Beauty is as embarrassing and unknowable,

As faddish and speculative and fleeting as Feeling!

He is more beautiful than I am.

I march to the garden to battle,

Inevitably drop my sword at the sight of him.

His beauty is as obvious as blood.

I study it like the ecosystem of honeysuckle

Creeping on the trellis,

The muddy gills of a mushroom.

It’s the same as when the lid of the chest remains open at the foot of my bed,

Leaving me to dream of glowing nocturnal plants and giant trenches.

Again I have failed to divert my fantasies from him,

And again I hate my fingers

Because they are not his touching me.

Still, I never adorned them with rings,

And I never wrote him a poem.

Even this one is about grief, mostly.