This isn’t the form
of what you’ve waited
to fill you;
it’s the shape that
houses your longing,
the shell whose dimensions
hold you lightly

– lightly as a cell holds the incarcerated heart —

while you press the walls
with your fingertips
the way your mind tests
the measure of your skull
in quiet panic, wondering if its
capacity to let in light
is just an incidental side-effect
of emptiness.

As silver thread:

restrains

the light

and ravenous

animals.

When desire is separated from its objects, and its hungry, lunging verbs —

want
possess
keep

– have lost their teeth and turned intransitive

(what word is the opposite of “want”? and why can’t I carry that word around with me at all times, carved on a bracelet, to ward off these seizures of longing?)

that’s the moment you start to

fade
float
disappear

and take on wings instead of teeth and claws, and air instead of blood, and turn to light around your edges.

And the real work begins.