Backwards Poem
 

I stumble upon him like suicide. Our first meeting leaves
two footprints in a sprinkle of dust on the railings of a bridge.

In secret I take a pen and knife & nick my
initials all over the wood of his bones.

Into his navel I blow a figure of sorrow carved from amber
found in a landlock of flesh. It lodges in the pit of his spine.

When I finally wrench him from himself & into me
the victory is the flinging of a rock at the eye of the sun.

During the day we move our mouths
through the motions, drag words like logs

out of ourselves, slide sentences onto the thick pink
rubber of our skin, in a desperate kind of birth.

At night he collects the black leaves inside me, breaks
into the caul of flesh, draws the husks of seeds out.

Our love is slitted waves, the bark of clouds at sunset
is every fear imagined taking up the slack. We saw into

the strangled knotted nub of each other, into the folds of
the wet dark bud, streak the face of my womb with spit & clay.

Later he rolls over. I feed the cats. Listen to their
mouths at the meat. His sadness like the tearing of skin

climbs from the egg of his eyes. I stub the
butt of my helplessness out with the light.
 
 

Melissa Ashley

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