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Forgive me, I wanted some company.
You worry I will veil myself in filmed garments
from the back of my childhood drawers,
the stuff of dreams — my dreams.
I make you a promise, that line about history:
History won't repeat itself, but it might rhyme.
You love me, so you don't puncture
my flimsy logic that treats the past
as a blueprint for the present as the future
remains unscathed and new.
I know it, so I guide you to the table,
pads pressed to your budding blades,
my rosy guest of honor.
We heard this chapter
would rewind our years, re-peach
our perimeters, bristle our masks.
Yes, and.
As I ripen, a former self inside me
rudely ashes.
Can I cradle myself
both in Becoming and Ending
while weaving you into the flamestitch
of my family? My best stories,
I've told you once, a thousand times.
So you know. You know the milk,
wine, and honey is milk, wine, and
honey but sometimes it precedes a
Slaughter.
Still, we dine, gorging on pretense:
the wayward 'daughter' and her
hard-angled lover.
In my bedroom, I mime her, that ashen girl
inside of me. Trace the periphery of
need. Limbo my fingers near your thighs
hot as Helios, burned-up as Hades. Then gift
you my archives, soft and unburied.
Your hands move mine
through an impassable gate. Rhyming my past
with such slant, skilled revisions.