I am haunted
haunted by a boneless wraith of luminous black,
bent blue at the waist in the gestures of bathing.
Focusing and adjusting, I break the white grid around the contours of the body. Let's go,
let's dance the pale cyclamen line,
the line of our selves and our loves that barely breathes its labored breath beneath the onramp's protective ring of fire.
We vanish in a wave of heat,
a profusion of oranges and lemons.
It is easy to hold in the mind
the lover's damp brow, the chromatic veins
through indigenous skin, like the wilt of a sickly plant,
but the self is quite small
like a martyr, stretched out like tracing paper.