silver

you might let something soaked in silver slip
through your fingers. you might become saturated
in words, comb them through your hair with silver-
coated sentences dripping off your tongue, so sharp
and sweet, delicate, like honey slowly sticking
the threads of you together. you might sleep,
enclosed in the arms of a song, stretched
across the moonlight as it skips
over river rocks, cobblestones. you might dream of ships,
silently gliding across still waters (but they aren't really still,
nor silent, though you'll dream them that way somehow,
though the sirens warned you not to trust their hushing silences,
smiles). you might recreate yourself as sunlight,
pour over my closed eyelids, dance across my sternum
and toes and fingers and belly. or you might simply slip
away like something silver, sharp and saturated
in the hushing sound of wind.

protection

i want to curl up in the notches of your spine
safe in the warmth
in the shadow
in the valley between one vertebrae and another.
i want to curl up
like a flower falling asleep,
holding itself together,
shading the sun in its belly
so it doesn’t spill out all at once,
instead percolating gently
through folded calyx.
i want to be protected,
separate the straw from my flaxen hair
and let you bathe me
like the most precious newborn
while i sob into my knees
and break into a million hazy vignettes;
i have forgotten how to be whole.
i want our fingers, or eyelashes
to interlace until we forget
we were ever distinct.
you’ll fight the shadows,
triumphantly lighting matches in an
abandoned brick apartment,
not daring to sleep in case
they steal me away in the night.
i want to curl up in the notches of your spine
and feel safe in the valleys
of your protection.