—I had only ever heard of you.
Yours was a name I could not speak.

To speak your name was to break
a covenant with language, was

to admit to language’s vanity.
For years I wrestled with an angel

that was really a sack of potatoes
with costume wings. Even still, I lost.

You were elsewhere, washing a fish,
planting a patch of weeds in the center

of the strawberries. & I lived without
grace, telling women I could see them

as I gazed into my hands, neglecting
friends to whom I vowed to administer

the machines of my listening, breaking
the trust of my employers, lying when

asked if I felt what I said I had felt.
Beloved, how could I have known

you would be waiting for me anyway
with your salamanders & asteroids,

your jazz piano & panic attacks,
your bright chamomile & medicine

breath? What did I do to deserve you?
This nearly untenable tenderness,

the silence of your love like the trunk
of a Buick buried a mile under the earth.

Beloved, here’s how the story goes:
once I was given a body & I hated it;

I hated my body; I hid in my hate;
& then I left; & there you were—

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