And What Happens to the People Who Come Into Our Lives and Try to Love Us

I’ve been crawling your body for weeks, seeking
scars, a signature left behind, some sort
of split where the shrapnel went in and did the skin
heal over before the metal

was removed. I’ve been trying hard to still your eyes long
enough to let me crawl inside, but I cannot quite make it before
they shift, flash, or blink tossing me off, making me grab for something
to steady, check around for someone watching

me navigate the displacement of ground underneath, my rubber knees, bare
feet grasping the stingy rubble crumbling. Crying through smoke surrounding, grey tear streaked face barely able to breath. This place is too thick
with history, more a photograph in a book of me peeping

now through a window, some people on a beach, sand in creases, twisted
hair, honey skin smoothed from wind and abrasion, smiles rising and fading, windblown loneliness, the ache for life to begin again where it’s now
stagnant and peeling, the same since last spring. Honey, I’m trying to draw

myself back to safety, inside again to the stubble on your chin, the pulsing
of your tongue, or the soft v between your fingers, but the stillness outside this reality is killing me and the wind wont stop howling your name, telling me if I cut you open I could catch a glimpse of infinity.