This will destroy you.

Sometimes,
I find myself attempting to contain you in my veins.
Like somehow
that would bring you close enough to the walls of my aorta,
and it would be there
that you call home.

But I cannot tie down your wings
and stuff you beneath my pores.
you are too gracious.
My skin is insult to your beauty.

Not even life line rivers
can breathe enough oxygen within me
to keep you alive in its flowing.

You are the closest thing I've seen to holy.

You don't believe in holy,
yet you carry halos beneath your tongue
borne from the vocal chords
in your esophagus.

I sometimes wish that
I could curl myself into those sounds,
seep into their grace,
and maybe then
I would know better the art of beauty.

But for now,
I tuck your harmonies into my belly
and digest you into my bloodstream
in attempts to cleanse the dark of old age from my insides.
Because for far too long,
I have seen the world from Mercury feet,
sending messages through air waves,
always running from my own heels.

Before you,
I am paused.
Stone toes to the ground,
my arms are reaching new lengths.
Never have I wrapped myself so tightly within them,
embracing, embracing, embracing.
Learning to hold myself as tightly as I do the world.
Learning to hold myself.

Despite the broken.
Despite the night sunrise afternoon
word struggles.
Despite my rampant feet,
you are arm stretching.
you are fingers holding,
against the cacophony of the world.
against the sound of my insides.

You are nothing short of holy.

Yet you lie between the same sheets
that my body rests beneath.
At times,
I fold my skin between my fingertips
to test the consciousness of my eyelids.
These same fingertips
know yours
and I pray my eyelids away
so that I may become impervious
to skipping moments like these.

Never have I known anything like this,
like better than toes in the sand
better than snowflakes on kissing mouths
we are
kissing mouths
bones
souls,
kissing our skipping heartbeats,
glad to see them off,
never missing them.
never missing them.

Thus I ask of you, lover
Keep me in your splendor
so that I may bask in your radiance.
so that when the sun explodes,
I will not know grief.
I will only know the contours of beauty.