You know what I found

              in your centre

of metal, mortar?

              Within, wet fruit, bound

in flesh, convulsing

              with shame, bare

in the wrong street.

              Here you were, refusing age

time’s demands—

              discipline, elegance, tact—

as this void thirsted

              for a bloodless happiness

it once knew, small but enough

              & once upon a morning, thin enough

to have woven

              into a world of green glass—

Let me now rescue

              that bright pleasure,

O joy-idiotic, all mine; warm sun

              coiling its way into moist

intestines, never even coming

              to know its unknowing. The aught,

that Body-Before you were cornered,

              a simpler light had thrived inside us.

One we kept awake for

              till the end of our days—

Do you know revenge is only revenge

              when it is proportional to the crime?

Not your fault, the doctors

              had intoned. Ants crawled in

as desire does,       on the soft, lone

              carcass of a butterfly. What is this

pale shame sitting in your eyes?

              answer it. Let me. It’s a slow

drawl under cotton sheets,

              low hum of devastation

come to congeal you

              into silence.

And you, do you let it eat

              your remaining days?

Are you breathing,

              may I

enter?