i always understood that perhaps you were not a god.
i never believed i was immortal,
but simply that your presence elevated me to the peaks,
to look down from the tops of the world.
i remember feeling hollow, scooped-out,
like love had stolen my collarbones and
i couldn't help but to stoop in and over myself,
like i couldn't help but to bow my neck
to the force i didn't want and couldn't get rid of.
and grass grew on the insides of my chest,
inhabiting my lungs and choking away the empty scar tissue
that threatened to colonize me.
and it grew and grew, fed by the rain of my grief,
sprouting out of my mouth and down into my arms
until i was a creature filled with straw,
fragrant and made simply for you.
i was easy to burn, all of my blood taken root in the soil,
my whole soul buried deeply
and only my fingers left to move feebly at your command,
a straw-girl. root-thin and see-through.
you were the long fall to the ground.
i shipped my love both ways,
to the sea and upstream like the salmon come to die,
as long as there was water and gravity to hold me down.
where the repetitions of the sea wore the sand into glass,
when i clothed myself in lightning-sand, mundane radiation
come down to take form,
like the angels who left the presence of god
to experience despair and the utter lightness of being,
the seraphim of melancholy.
