I move to fill

up space. I am moved

to make full that which

hungers.

By age ten, I loved

to climb down into the caves and press

my body to the cool sandstone that has

forever smelled of fertile silence,

between the breathless black

jaws of some unclaimed tomb

no bigger than my own living

vessel, I would

rest.

The earth himself would hold me

within my body’s borders,

tuck me beneath his tongue to

smother my unyielding urge to gobble

up stagnant spaces like a rabid dog

who can’t bear to waste a drop

of this free life.

When you left

I did not stay

on my side

of the bed. I swelled

out like the tide until I took

up this whole ocean of quilt

I pour

my blind and gaseous longing like wet smoke

into the awkward pits at dinner

parties, disguised in a charade

of mirth, playing the hysteric fool to

unite strangers in their incredulity-

it was meant

to be a gift.

They say life is not perfect

but the craving for life is

Perfect.

It was meant to be

a gift but all too often I swallow

up the many timbred voices that compose

a well-cultivated room,

exhuming and exhausting myself as

a black hole must exhaust herself from kissing

the mirror again and again

until lipstick mars the emptiness

that gazes back at me,

filling me with her

craving.