—for Lee

You are not a beautiful word. You are not a poem to be read and reread. You are not here for that, for turning over in my mouth until you are frayed and a part of me. You are not a mantra to be spoken into the hollow place in my— You are not something to be sounded out, some aural oral mystery that tastes like oranges when we say oranges and smells like walking barefoot and trailing rind, the memory so strong that I am sticky and blossomed when tongue touches alveolar ridge, the sound of it tactile. You are not in dictionaries and you do not rhyme well and you are not here to make sense of everything for me, a prism to lay down on and filter and filter and filter myself through until I am a point of light, small and hard and shakingly, achingly bright. You are not here for that. You are not a naming, a knowing, a prayer to a star on a night when I am afraid to be alone and hungry, you are not that wish that I toss up like a nickel, fine and arcing. You are atom and atom and atom and atom, you are carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen, you are water and proteins and lipids and acids, you are cells and cells and cells and cells, you are cells and cells and cells and cells, you are muscle, you are bone, you are striation and rhythm, you are pulse and breath and the sweat smell of sleep on my shoulder. You are here.
You are here.
You are here.