Bound In Blood

I’ve often wondered

what you keep closeted

beneath those tufts of hair,

stretching from scalp to cheeks;

is it memory, is it shame,

is it a language you never spoke aloud?

I’ve often wondered

what you hide in your arteries,

throbbing blood and bone

from head to toe;

do they ferry guilt,

or are they tunnels of silence

lined with rusting echoes?

I’ve often wondered

what you bury inside your femur,

what you scorch on your fingertips,

what you forget in your entrails;

muscle memories too fragile for light,

too stubborn for decay?

But what I’ve wondered most of all

is how you would taste:

your secrets, your silences, your marrow,

as sides of an elaborate buffet,

laid carefully on a porcelain plate.

Because to know you is never enough

I must eat you whole,

drink you in through every pulse,

until the last drop of you

flows into me,

your spine dissolving into my tongue,

your syntax spliced into my veins.

No grave, no god, no mouth

to ever separate you,

for you are mine to belong to

bound in blood.