The ends of my world

I can’t feel the presence of a god here
so keenly
now that I can touch the ends of my world,
run a finger across a drumlin
of hallowed herringbone rib
and trace lingering fingertips
across plains of skin.

It wasn’t always like this.
Not with those
other ones.
Those somehow not homes
like showers in cheap hotels
left wet 

shivering from the bone.

I’ve let you pinch and snip every former stitch,
felt it unbutton
and unpin.
I’ve let the lids of flesh lie, list
from the parts of me I’d cut to fit
some other love
I’d soon forget.

You scratched the face from every frame
and I’ve let you
see beneath
see the wish I’d known you previously
see the fear I would have pierced that film
all ill-prepared and futile I, in my
original sin.

I let you in
to see these places I go to dream.
You
now canon
brought love

I can’t ink

and nail in pen. You

love my poorest words.

So I gift them all

my sin and me,

for Emma,
forever

again and

again.