This morning, light fell onto my page
same as it did in the room I was once
pinned to. Identical, the slant and slice
of gold, the smell of spring’s breath,
musk of a foreign body’s lope and lurk.
I am pinioned beneath the weight of him
still—I think it will be a thousand
more sleeplessnesses before I can creep
my way out from under his heft, the hands
clasping the red of my lips, sealing the damp
tinge of my tongue. Pelvis bored
to mine I am always straddled supine,
wrestled over until, like falling, I am weightless,
a reed-boned bird; a blind and diving bird.
Most days I can make the bed
a raft, him a trailing sinker around my neck.
It’s the opening eye that is the problem—
the unfurling of the moment that seizes me
by the throat and shakes. This morning
the poem on the page was a love poem to my
skin. No—an ode to how I bit and clawed, or
an elegy to my guilty body, breaking in waves,