thirteen truths about Gemma

*
You are almost like a secret concealed within me.

A secret walking around bold as brass.
A secret revealing itself with every motion of your hands towards me.

A secret.

*
I meet you
and I can feel your skin glowing silver,
your waxing body rising within your clothes.

Tonight, the moon is a thin crescent setting in the trees.

*
I should not tell you how my breath is caught
on the edges of every woman who resembles you
in the slightest way.

It is as if your knife sliced all these women
from the air that once held them.

*
I am writing a letter
to you
in sepia ink
that I will burn
in fifteen years

still lacking the courage to send it

and postage rates have nearly tripled since then

*
You are a language
spoken only by scholars
and the insane.

You are the secret name
of the silent river
that runs beneath the skin.

*
In the darkness
all whispers are intimate
even those no one hears.

*
Because you belong
to the world and I
belong only to myself.
Because you are the toothed sun
and I am the loping moon
and when we touch all the shadows
of leaves on the sidewalk
become crescent-shaped and strange.

*
I remember
blood on snow

I remember
poppies unfurling

I remember
your voice at my throat

you slid into me
sweeter than opium's kiss.

*
the world is rich and complicated
where you move and breathe

carved from ivory you wait
for the return

*
I like to think of you odalisque
in the long grass, your body stretched
and your crystal eyes turned
to the blind luckless sky.

*
How I love you is not about
the known map of holding you

how I love you is about
the unknown map of letting you go.

*
I am learning ancient characters
so I can paint them on your skin.
I will write poetry in dead languages
on your shoulders.

I will breathe my Apache name
onto your neck, hidden
by your hair.

*

Night in the arid hills east
of the mountains. The stars
have forgotten you

but the wind never will.