at your back

when the silk pull of fingers stirs the song in
your skin, exhaling you through each paper
thin layer of time like a chariot slicing a
dense forest into neat geometry 

when the sweet dark of you pushes up
bucketfuls of breath, spilling right now
through the brick work of worn stories
lined in picket fences of closed teeth

when the book of you is feathered open,
laying its pages one by one on the hungry
wet tongue of wind and you plunge the
mounting tones of your pulse into a
thunderstorm of daylight, and the thin skins
of your reality heave beneath the bulging
tides of your faith 

and nothing has ever felt like this

and you close your eyes, pray the secret
algorithm of stillness will tattoo this eternally
inside the folding bouquet of your neural
pathways

and you promise to never again cloak your
spinning limbs in a fortress of exquisitely
carved corners, or set your jaw in perfect
form for disguising your face

but no matter how you try, to saddle this
knowing, to tether it’s gleam, 

you land in a crunch of bones, a curled
familiar of clenching, a sinking into the
banks of yourself, a flattening flame drifting
in distance, swells of giving up pressed in
the shape of waiting

for the warm rush of remembering at your
back, the trickling hum of fingers drawing
you awake