by Samantha Ratcliffe
Just to sleep at night,
sometimes I hold you from behind and run
my thumb across your gullied fault lines.
Read the book spine of your body.
Your second growth of spine, a love cut you grew up like a raised garden of personhood, sprouting pink flowered scar. Magenta row of rosebuds. You carry the supine thorns in you, straight across your heart you dared them to cut you up for good. For the good of man-kind, to be the kind of man who is allowed to be joyous and gay. To be okay You cut and pulled yourself closer to yourself, Soft covers over your heart, all blood and capillary waves of relief. Interstate highway of free land reclaimed indefinitely. My thumb travels miles across your chest, walks one way and another, slowly and solely in meditation, in awe of it, this handful of all, of you. At the edges, I turn back because there’s so much more to know, better. Braille poetry of a man stretch like a smile beaming with pride in the summer heat. Shirtless like a signature dancing its way into the most beautiful chosen name. You’re a birthday card full of love letters to yourself. Sacred and brimming with secrets so dear you’ve taped up all the edges for safekeeping and it feels
like a knot beneath my fingers. Clay enclave of heart beating code to me beneath the wall of your chest. We’re night cot neighbors, skin bonding, tiny knocks back and forth, always asking to come in, come closer. My thumb walks the gravel holler of your chest as if to come home. Foothills of hair and sky of freckled star. Everything about you is North. In the dark, we are just two lost pieces of Pine Mountain shifting to meet itself all over again.
Pegasus 