Hunger Machine

Disconnect from the source—shedding earthskin, becoming something else entirely. Eyelids flitting, abstract colorways, water shapes, everywhere light.

Entangled in fragments. We are bound by the same wires, they reach from the center of her chest and entangle themselves within me.

I am arching my back and cheating my cheekbones towards the light. This vessel of mine, pendulum movements, waves, perpetual currents.

To return, I’ll have to pull myself up from my navel and sew my body back in.

My face is flushed crimson. The wind bites into the softness of my face skin, lifting the hair from the center of my back.

Like smoke from the window, like blood veins spreading. I am injected and sedated, but my eyes have never held so open and wide.

The whole world lies in front of me, the chemical machine, the hunger motor, the wanting engine.

She is pressing the wires in on my left side. I am coming alive.

The mist hangs down in flossy strings. Those little ribbons, draped over our breathbed, swishing gulps of milk.

The dust settles in rubber bullets. She is saying all that lovers say, on her knees, her softened prayer, her angels kiss, a weapon shower.

I am pressing my hands in, cradling the mark. She has left me changed, my boyish skin, I’m lost within desire’s breath.

She connects and disconnects. I am coming alive.