Worship Fragments

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He untangles the duvet from his legs and crosses the room, naked;
I remember that I have prayed about this before. Long nights
when the soil was hard and I could scarcely dig my hands into it.
Took it up in fistfuls, pressed the dirt between my palms, firm and frigid.
Mother, Father, give me a sign. Anything.
I pressed the rune into the ground, the one engraved in both of our bodies,
pleading, with my forehead to the earth. Let my fingertips
find the ink-black scar in darkness. Let his arms stutter in their search for me.


Now, the winter’s over and the harvest has borne abundance.
His chest is my altar. Sternum opens into sanctum, his heart a votive.
How strange it is to worship with no proxy,
skin-to-skin with a seraph. There are seams on his back
where the stained lancets of wings
rupture from the surface,
and I weave my fingers through the feather-glass with care.
He is both god and cathedral; our bed is consecrated ground.
When he rises, there is nothing to obscure him,
his totality.


I take comfort in knowing one day, in the future,
there will be no holy flesh left unexplored.
I shroud his freckled shoulders, become interwoven,
accept my sainthood. And when, in another season,
the radiator is broken and I’m lying under him on the herringbone floor,
I will be penitent in the confessional of his ear.


Forgive me — I have waited so long.
That is when he’ll commit the original sin, whisper: I want you in my ribs.
I want us to begin and end as one.

Here I am again,
as I will remain,
taking communion from his tongue
between slices of apple.