am not ashamed, I’ll know how delicate
you are within your definitions by
the ways you raise your thoughts and how you sit
within your skin— when you are me and, stirred,
we’re seamlessly at ease, the one among
the other like the voice who breathes the word.
I’ll harmonize the arias you’ve sung
for no one— whispers dropped on baseboard floors—
and vocalize the patterned sighs released
when you have looked at me— my voice is yours—
with you erect on you, my feet, I’ll feast
on symphonies— and each will undergird
another like the voice who breathes the word.
When strokes, once only yours, are also mine
to curve the sleek horizons of my soul—
that kissing-point where energy’s in line
with matter, there where airy movements roll
some molecules for wind— then, like a bird
that flies by instinct, you’ll become my nature’s
mother like the voice who breathes the word.
“I now renounce the geometric shape
my selfhood had apart from you; conform
me to the image of your life and let
my chaos’ space expand in you and warm
me by your galaxies of suns and set
me in your constellations,” I’ve assured
you, Brother, like the voice who breathes the word.
Fulfill the ancient prophecy: increase
yourself and overwhelm me and
be lifted up and draw me till I cease
to be apart from you and place my hand
within your own and hold me till I’m cured
and carry me to term within your flesh,
My Lover, like the voice who breathes the word.
I’ll hide me in your skin till I’m enmeshed
in you so shamelessly that— naked— I
will stand with you, will know myself and fear
no judgment nor perversion from the eye
who visions Love, who from such Love would peer
within and find me, blessèd, undeterred:
“Uncover”— like the voice who breathes the word.
Genesis 2:25—
And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Revelation 21:2—
And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
