auroral

maybe this finds you

in the morning

as you awake

before the parts of your body

find each other

before your thigh becomes tan and whole

before your bones rope with muscle and blood

before the longbow arc of your back

belongs fully to you

maybe in that space

in the morning

as you awake

some of you

is mine

crescent

I want one thing

from you

the story of the scar

that arcs

across your shoulder

the one half-hidden

by the narrow blue strap of your dress

comet's course

orbital bow

I want to hear you

tell it

as I watch the space
between your eyebrows

as you decide

what to hide

fishbones

they punctuate my mornings

these small, folded pins

punched and tensioned steel, waved and capped

flung into the world by the millions, invisible and forgotten

until they pile by my window

along the lip of the sink

in the dusty right angles where bed meets floor

they alight

the small and large, all subtly glistening shades of straw

of earth and cave-dark

after you leave

after coffee cupped in your hands

and sheets still-warm and smelling of you

they find each other

and clumsily, slowly

form a nest

in the high center of my chest