There is a kind of love that vibrates
through the teeth, rattles

the nerves, trembles the jaw. I want
to love something that bleeds. I want
to baptize us in the stop-bath twelve months

past, undevelop the paths you’ve
made. I want to see us washed out and

worn by the ocean, that October
you told me your head was filling with
sand, hourglassing wrong-side

up. I want to unwrite this beast I make
of you, this stinging nettle I scan

the flowerbed for, newly tender-toed. I want
less metaphors for needles
in drawers, for the ways four

chambers are always just the same
big room echoing into itself.