To Shade in Everything

            for the victims of the Orlando shooting, Pulse nightclub

 I drew our names on a beach.

            There were worms working their way out

                        like brain matter escaping the body.

You directed me to kill them and handed me stones.

            I said, “First kiss me and I’ll do anything you want.”

                        Your lips were wet.

You were hungry.

            We were kings in the kitchen,

                        but we went to the mall.

It could have been anywhere.

            You stopped to smell candles.

                        I told you they all smelled like bathroom fragrances

and you hissed.

            I followed you through a clearance section.

                        We pretended to try things on.

We went home,

            went outside

                        onto the patio, and couldn’t resist

to hold each other

            up. We

                        streaked all the way to the river.

Water poured down your face

            and your mouth was liquid for a moment.

                        We knew the snow owl was perched above us, hunting us.

So the only way for us to know we were alive

            was from the changes in the water,

                        running from our existence.

I could hear the pebbles shifting beneath your feet.

            My hands on your chest were old sea turtles

                        gnawing at your nipples and stray hairs like kelps.

I don’t know the difference,

            everything in the ocean,

                        a brand new and old world.

You stood outside my door.

            I came to you in a towel and invited you to shower with me.

                        The stubble on your face dredged all over my body

took my breath away,

            not a kiss.

                        I have been wanting you since the day I was born.

Your brown skin was the first brown I’d fallen in love with,

            even after 20 years of brownness.

                        I mention this to nobody,

not even as you’re in my palms and we’re getting to know each other.

            I‘m worried somebody will take it all.

                        Instead of you I dreamt about something else.

I taught myself how to have lucid dreams.

            I gave myself strict rules

                        to have stronger wrists, enunciate like a man,

keep from finding you,

            to not stay in the sun

                        for fear of getting darker.

How was my performance?

            We should all get something more than tombstones of friends for trophies.

                        In a hundred years, we’ll be a hundred years older.

We will swim in the rivers naked again,

            our bodies still take perfectly to winding directions.

                        We’ll bathe ourselves in darkness,

dig a grave in the ground with our eyes

            and dream: A legacy

                        of pretend and seek, diminished.

I will have figured this all out by that time.

            The grave is cozy, I suppose.

                        From what I can remember you love being in the elements.

We are by the ocean, by the rivers, by the mountains. The soil counts.

            Death is not scary, you’ll tell me.

                        I believe you. There is dinner on the table.

The tea on your breath is of jasmine,

            the heat from your mouth is from its boiling water.

                        I wake in your arms, in the dark.

We look all around us to the birds feeding, plummeting

            themselves into our sea.

                        You say you’ve only seen birds pecking for worms.

We are worms. The mud is thick in some places and watery in others.

            This is our element.

We’re up to our necks in it.

originally appeared in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry