first, let the humming wind arrive; a back door creaked open; the roommates asleep in their quiet thrones; let the shower’s whispering kiss pass through your valleys: rivers claiming the landscape of you in secret; swelter in that fragile simmer; quench the light’s small beckoning — kingdom of men gazing; a summoning of glass, a quiet night’s wind, a cleansing, antiseptic: ready the altar for flesh & bone; ready the body a brief entering; this is ritual; this has ended in war before, your blood has stained the executioner’s calloused hands; these men have made a legend of you — but when your knight caller arrives, he will not be the night’s wind, but instead, its tremble; i've never done this before, a heathen confession, quaking & kneeling before his God’s split temple; undressing before the strange shore he washed upon; & bless his unsheathing armor — the boy who charged into battle weaponless & bare; the un-swallowed swords of his gospels; the prayer of his untouched lips: the hands who dared ask your blood permission to dance; an unlaced apology, a pubic hair unwinding itself from your tongue; bless his laughter before the sigh & wall crash; his foreskin dancing backwards into sheath but not surrender; how he painted a knotted river across your chest’s landscape, not apologizing for the way his body floods because there were no casualties this time & maybe that alone is reason to praise the way bodies cry Jericho, in all their collapsing — you retreat to the water and wash away the remnants of his saline knotting in between your chest hairs; lineage refusing escape; salt who dared call the ocean wound; stubborn semen, claiming your hairs like a petty tithe — small & in -significant sacrifice for the boy who first gifted himself to stranger; heir to this history of self-shedding; your rapist once told you they find artistic inspiration by sleeping with people they shouldn’t; you want to write a poem about your first time & you can never recognize yourself in it; how your first time was no questions, just answers you never knew existed; & this patient, curious boy, who asked before claiming any part of you, could have met another man tonight & become you, all split temple & ungodded crucifix; boy whose desire lead him to breakage on stranger shorelines; but that is not either night-filled boy, that is not this night, & for that you say amen. Hamdullah — a blessing for every god who failed to break you —

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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