A closed circuit,
you said.
The intertwining of us so complex
we could not unlock our lips
at 5 am.
You struck
deeper
than I knew I was.
The colors of our eyes melted
into a new spectrum behind the sound of rain—
or was there thunder that night?
Or just the darkness?
In my body, a hollowing out,
an expansion.
My pulse did not quicken.
It broadened into echoes
in the cavern opening in my chest.
Our ribs scraped together,
and we erupted into flame.
A spreading wide of my fingertips,
in the way I’d thought
as a child
I would someday awake to myself.
The ridges rising silently
from my shoulder blades,
dug into the comforter or sheet or pillow.
Or was it the carpet?
And now the skin
has begun
to peel
from my knees, my knuckles, the tops of my feet.
I am transforming,
a wet and writhing thing
all tentacles or horns or claws or spirit,
wriggling, grotesque, massive.
And the buds on my back—
they may be molten leather wings—
could rip through the mattress,
surrounding us in a flurry—
an electrical storm—
of brown and white feathers.