two wholenesses plump and impenetrable. 

my skin is thick as grapefruit, warming pockmarked

in the winter sun. her head bobs sweetly. am I 

unmoved? I think idly of rupturing & scorching the earth. 

‘how do well-adjusted people fall in love?’ 

I google, ‘how do securely attached people

fall in love?’ but there is no initiation. newly,

I am as mellow as duck feathers: as soft, as kind. 

I discovered love as

revelation: the urgent baring of things. soon, I was 

targeting pliable hearts in ragged confessionals 

on the midnight curb side. I, a lightning rod of shock 

& raw feeling. love, like pouring. love, like

I am an emptying vessel and here floods every terrible thing

I have ever felt and you, innocently, have never known to feel

you are welcome / receive me / save me / receive me

she stretches languidly. healed, 

I am studiously disinterested in violence. I gaze

at my woollen gloves, the vacant skyline. 

I used to be fortressed & vulnerable; now I walk unconcealed,

wholly untouchable. there is no electricity in the 

honest confusion of being alive. our arms swing 

childishly. I close my eyes. there must be a way 

of learning to love her without first 

destroying myself at her feet.