THE BLOOD ORANGE

we sat in your bright bed
you drawing all over my body with lipstick
I did not like
talking about how hideous my genitals
all genitals like mine
I sleeping on the desk nightly—
your cuts in your lamb skin
orchids and lilies erupting every laceration
"your bloodguts—soil
ha ha
are your veins worms
or are they roots of the flowers—



in another stage, another world—
lying in peach bed
comforter cascading from top bunk
window open
ice air rolls steamtrain into room and
dissolves artificial heat to bare scraps
everywhere smell of apple skin
half-sex against one another
den mammalian heat
both in separate coal mines
staring at coal; backs of eyelids
coal mine darkness to unseeable horizon
left my canary in that piano room some months ago
"you do not deserve to be loved
no one deserves that at all
whoops

but of course
of course this
of course of course
and again
and again
of course of course
of course of course

years later
still making my way from the collapse
your rosary
still porcelain opium smell
intact on windowsill

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