We all want the melt of you

the pulsing red ocean

full of brine, 

combed by pearly topsail shimmers

imagined to infinity but never really making slices,

want to drive a four-fathom pike

down and down and lose it on the way. 

Fathom comes from old english 

when it used to mean “embrace” or “outstretched”

because it’s six feet across a man

fingertip-to-fingertip when he’s on his back. 

But what have we got of your embrace? 

I’ll tell you what I have,

what scraps I keep

to warm myself on nights like this

(anyway I’m not alone). 

Tonight I’ve drunk so much

I’m the only one who sees 

what it is: there’s a house 

in back of your place 

after dark when open the unblinking light-eyes,

and all around servants haul shiny black boxes.

Now you’re dancing downstairs

with the open-mouthed pieces of someone’s parents

who sent them out into this deathless war

for a paste-gem crown that dissolves in bathroom mirrors,

from the naked skin wet and yet unclean

and you won’t be the one to clean it. 

And I won’t be the one to do it to you,

the one to cut you deep

to get the taste of your mean-it breath

the feel of all the clutching and pressing

the sound of promises to half-die for it.

Later I go downstairs

after checking my face in a mirror

bare of precious things

to find you are gone.

The diamond in this room

the house is shuttered

and I shut my eyes too

prying out into that dark

waiting for a pulse;