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Description
my doe-eyed, orchid-jawed, clam-nailed, star nippled one--
my friend behind the door,
back covered in silver-skin because you are unwashed,
unripened, not yet too full of yellow light to read
a short book or play Chopin on the piano--

remember when we were roommates of Despair?
we lived in misery as though in a well-fitting white room,
and protected each other with songs the color of a churchless prayer.

We lay side by side, toe to head, and wriggled and jostled for days
in nests of salt like two bitter pearls, spitting teeth uselessly
at flies.

Remember the flies, festooned in the jolly pineapple?

You wore a crown of flies then, like blood-filled thorns,
and your thighs were crowns of bruises.

Recall the slaughter of the night, rattling doorknobs
and quaking bones; recall the laughter that slept so deep
and long within you that I could see its eyes half-closed
when I peered into your caves.

Remember the windows without curtain,
and staring at the sun as it stared back at us?

Remember that I did not sleep then and you bit both our nails.

We are odd ones now. We no longer fear the sky,
even when it is black.
We live underground and listen to water running and calling
in our clean, separate houses.

But our adjacent bodies will grow old,
wither, become distant from our own selves,
and be arranged in an "L" in the desert,
their dreams in the shapes of huge, bloated skulls.