Stranded (A Love Poem)
Before I let love graze my skin, no matter how much I ache,
I ask a critical question, a test in which I am the dangling
worm, the living bait. I wonder, If we were stranded
on a sunscorched island, with nothing to consume but sparse
grass blades and morning dewdrops, tell me—would you
eat me? That way one of us might still be saved, and I want
to be the saving muscle: take this body, sink your teeth in,
the way you did as a child licking from the red pools over
ridges of collarbone. Drink slowly. Lick your lips redder.
Sharpen your teeth on cleanpicked bone. Chew every bit
with care—let me see you savor each piece of me as no
one has before you, and no one else ever will—until
my eyes fade, my skin-glow snuffs out. Then weep for
life’s success, the empty beauty, the stripped carcass.
In fact, promise me you’ll do it, my brother: eat me in the end
if it looks like I am coming to nothing, and while you do,
you can describe to me the ways in which each part is beautiful.
I want to be eaten, and you, who understand me without words,
have promised to walk with my skins wrapped tight around you.
