Steph Bruzon

since it serves me less not to confess that 

I dream you 

incorporate—

from two bodies, flowerbeds—

that as I rest my head,

I feel you extend to hold it 

/

and how little you’d know it

now

but through smoke of lemongrass can see 

how  

untouched

lips 

still

get 

wet 

with transgression. 

/

I 

dreamed 

you 

dreamed 

me—an obsession 

smothered in strange sheets, 

my fever was 103 degrees

when like Plath, I flickered 

on and off 

and

our 

stack 

of 

paths

lined up

crossed out

the poss-

ibi-

lity

to see 

the one laid out before me. 

/

hold me 

it gets lonelier

still

I go to the kitchen cabinet

for conversation

ravage my psychic revelations

and meet God at the bus stop

until

God makes it stop

until

I bleed 

bleed to ask 

that you

please—

/

don’t make good with anyone but me. 

/

I am

still

tending to our house of song 

still 

near you—when the moon is in Pisces 

still 

near you—when the moon is wrong 

and cold and on the brink 

of being blue—

still

near 

you. 

/

and you watch me 

as I watch you

over

and 

over 

and 

over 

and—

/

no more. I won’t wait. 

our funeral pyre,

our house of song 

was is has been 

on fire. 

/

and I have loved again.

I have felt the erotic extension of presence, 

patience, 

presence, 

and embodied everything we said was true before I knew what I thought I knew.

I am no longer the woman your manhood carved of me, 

no longer here to show you how broken (for you) 

I can be. 

/

still

I tend to our house of song. 

don’t make me wait. 

don’t make me take the last of what we have

and write it away

/

now that I know what it’s for, 

this lack of stars,

over which we have been at war:

/

it is pure night 

chernozem 

it wants to steal us,

steer us from within 

come, write 

what you dreamt 

what you know 

what you might.

/

and what might?

if you touched me again—

I would starve your night

/

how ashamedly

I would lend you my skin 

/

I would let you intrude on my becoming.

I would let you maim the marrow,

take the car, and be asleep when you get back.

take my childhood and torch the map.

I would let you find the softest place on my body and

bend

it

to

breaking.

/

this is no longer a poem.

what’s more direct than this:

my open heart longs

for your closed fist.