All the men that I tried to love

fit them into boxes,
peculiar gifts to my small self, stuff them down –
a pale foot pops out
thin-fingered hand with nails too long. they don’t fit well
they never did.

To search for you
I tried to love the unlovable
to choose as if blind and forget myself enough.

I spread myself out like a poor country with no roads;
my belly has become a map of the old lovers,
the spinal column erect like the temple of zeus
remembering each twist,
back against back
the skin weeping with aloneness.
I tried to love but couldn’t;
to bend and pretend to be what I never was.


I loved you all along and still do now

even though faceless and unknown, nameless nevertheless
even if perhaps only a fragment of my mind
no other lips will know to sing the song on my back
like you do –
skin to skin, as one
mirror to bone
fire to my home hearth.

even if you choose to not appear
I will not seek to find you in deformed mouths
unsightly faces
in the blank bodies of strangers
tucked behind cold earlobes and dry scalps.

I will not seek to find you again
in all these men I tried to love.

I wash them off the soles of my feet and spit them out with morning.

At last
I hold myself in the joy of this grief
you gave me eyes!
that’s all I need
to see what is, and no more.