The loop of her embrace
has no beginning.
Radium poison rings her eyes,
her teeth bright and sharp as prisms.
Her kiss wolfs down my tongue, my jaw,
her scales against my skin
flay me alive
Outside the muting veil
your memories of before
stretch faces, hands, places
against the surface
yet only the smallest particles
seep through, soul traces
reduced to half-life
Every part of her
saws into me,
another slit serrated open
with each stroke
You sought her out,
caressed her constant forward flow,
seduced her
(so you thought)
convinced her
that once loosed from her arrow
you could serve her
as no thing of mere duration could
When we begin again
I deny
(and can never defy the knot)
her coarsening skin,
the urgent click-tick of her breath,
how her fingers fuse like fins,
ivory rows behind rows sprouting,
glimpsed through the window
of her parted lips
Outside time's flow
you never paused to wonder
at how quickly she agreed,
how demurely she encouraged
your hands?
Inside the bubble,
inside the abyss,
I am seabed sustenance,
my scars peeled
to grow back again,
a new limb budding to replace
each one torn off and swallowed.
