Tell me the one where he tears
you open like curtains, where
there is never a window & he still climbs inside.
How he writes letters on your walls
with the soft scratching of fingers,
reeds riding a wind that doesn’t know how to stop.
You hear voices this way: scrape, scrape. Brock. Brock. Say

it a third time & the name will disappear,
a diamond in a heist, the alarm bell
still ringing, calling. Tell me about the harvest moonlight

gone missing in the pointed shadows
of bare branches. Someone will pick you from the night,

honey, someone will show you how to love in reverse.

Behind a dumpster, someone
will unlock your secrets. Face¬down.
Dear shadow. Dear sleep that lasts too long.
Look: your first string bikini,
your first dip in the ocean of skin & sweat
& consent. Rubbing against a beach
no one bothered naming, vague in the foggy mornings.

Look, maybe you don’t remember yourself
when the nation gets on top to get a good feel.
So tell me the one where you’re laying
with him & from your apartment
you see the stars embedding in the city like anchors
& traffic is opaque, stalled on the streets
while loud & gliding inside your body:
dear minutes, dear minutes.
Tell me how the ceiling fan still breathes.
Tell me how you get the guts to open your eyes
& he’s gone, you’re floating, the bed is floating, emptiness

has buoyancy & you have a name
for this feeling by now, devoted an entire sentence to it,

which always escapes with some precious thing— tell me how a sentence can run for a lifetime