your hairpins

notice the fluidity of my unbackspaced fingers -
no that’s a lie I need it to be perfect you are perfect and I am
trying so fucking hard to be - you are

the scent of winter mornings, musk 
of intimacy, smooth-scratchy whispers 
of broken French and

mine. I never need to erase the only truth as unworthy of denial
as the uncertainty of grass behind the fence 
we’ll never see past.

you
are mine and your body
utters it, shapes its lucidity
around it. when you see this fluidity
in my clumsy, flimsiness
do you smile?

do you pride yourself a puppeteer 
or do you let gravity fall victim
to your contentment’s excuses? 
don’t 
read this aloud, I have yet

to teach you how to tongue meaning out of my words
till they submit to your vocal intent. 
your arms have learned
intimacy in my accents all over again;
I am a woman of so many words
I will drag you with my uncertainty 
till you take it from my unkind sights, 
nurse it back to insatiable 
thirst and burn our throats enough
to show novice windows how it’s done

show me how it is done.

walk fear to the cul-de-sac and make it stay
so it never comes back and make it remember 
that these embers cry for firewood when all we’ve done
is chop trees when we forgot

you are mine and there is no forgetting

remember that seeing you feels like
watching a drunkerd spill his thoughts into a microphone;
I can’t stop snapping my fingers around you
where were you standing when the ground
swept from beneath these piscean feet?

yes I still believe in stars and yes
I will ask you to name constellations and yes 
I am taut like locks in hairpins and prim 
the way thoughts are conditioned 
but it’s only because I’m missing the ease I had

to hate me. when you call me beautiful I want 
to keep my eyes open, I want to watch
warmth tickle your pomacious cheeks as you
digress and insist

I will not resist this

I am calculated to chaos, a storm 
in its humble wake and you have made 
peace with my rumbling quakes.