Totally forgot to schedule this. Your birthday week does weird stuff to your memory. In any case, here’s the weekly poem!
It’s the kind of 4 am
that makes your sweat glands ooze at every twitch,
the kind of morning
that tangles around you like a sheet of spider’s web.
It’s when every notion is molasses in slow motion
and every piece you hear grasps at you like one hundred wandering ghosts.
I need you
to wash me as you would your sheets:
in cool, fragrant water
and soft, firm hands.
I need you
to leave me in the cold:
on harsh and hopeless cliffs,
spread out and breathing.
On a 4 am like this,
when other people press into
around
against
me,
I need ripples and air,
plunges and flight,
profound
3-hour lonelinesses.