i can't stop dreaming about devouring him , father.

these hands of mine , they look nothing look my mother's.

ʿʿ the good news ʾʾ , i tell god , ʿʿ is that we're dying. ʾʾ

you say my name and i want to knit my bones into your bones.

give a boy your mouth , he'll want to die for you.

cruel hands birthing nothing but cruel hands.

death is the mother of beauty.

you cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and beautiful , and before you know it , it's neither of those things , and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your eyes.

love is a feast but you've learned to abstain.

giving with love only to be met with slaughter.

what we'll always have is something we lost

i wanted her bones , her blood , her tissues , the sinews that bound her together. i would have held her to me though time had stripped away the tones and textures of her skin. i could have loved her for a thousand years until the skeleton itself rubbed away to dust.

i pretended indifference even in the presence of love , in the presence of hunger. and the more deeply i felt the less able i was to respond.

and i remember once my mother turning away from me in great anger. or perhaps it was grief.

i wanted him in that way we want what will wound us. heart hellbent on what will strangle it , run it over with a taxi , leave it ramshackled in the woods.

i've taken all her soul into my soul and through her i've become a man.

lately i've been waiting for my body to feel like a body rather than a cathedral of grief.