You shattered a dish in the kitchen.
I prayed you’d been cut
badly enough to want me.

I tiptoed past the hallway doors
standing like glaciers:
isolate rooms of promise and excuse.

My gown drifted in the arctic current
of your opaque silence,
just waiting to be peeled and thrown.

I knelt before you in the dusted shards,
your mess reshaping me.
I wore the fragments, let them mold my skin.

Finally, you cradled my gown in a knuckled grip. Stained red, it hung
like memory,
watching me gather your fine mosaic.

While you had me, glass kissed my knees.
To love you is to be the wound and the hand that opens it.