Your body is a storm I map by braille
lightning in the clavicle, tempests in the tendons.
I am the fool who chases weather,
tongue tuned to the frequency of flood.
I.
Your ribs are a cage of crows.
They caw when you laugh, beat their wings
when you arch into the knife-glow of moonlight.
I feed them my fingerprints. They hunger louder.
II.
We undress in the dialect of wreckage.
Your zipper, a fault line; my belt, a serrated psalm.
The floor wears our clothes like collateral.
The bed? A pyre of what if.
We burn in increments.
III.
Your mouth is a struck bell.
I am the clapper, you are the toll
each kiss a vibration that cracks the hour.
The neighbors complain about the noise.
We call it hymn.
IV.
Afterward, you peel an orange.
The juice runs like a confession down your wrist.
I lick the sin from your pulse,
taste the citrus and the copper,
the almost and the never again.
V.
The thunder, when it comes, is not sound but shape
your spine curved like a question mark,
my hands the italics in its margins.
We are the footnote, the asterisk,
the asterisk’s aftermath.
Epilogue:
Dawn arrives with a broom and averted eyes.
We sweep the night into a jar labeled evidence.
The crows escape. The storm grows teeth.
Somewhere, a bell forgets how to stop ringing.
