In Germany when a young girl dies her parents take her body to the river
and slip it beneath the dark waters. And there she lies,
her arms drifting out from her sides like lilies.
My father tells me I feel too much. But I’m a catastrophe,
why else would everything hit me at once like a bundle of knives?
Sometimes the walls close in faster than a hurricane;
sometimes my body is the only storm shelter I’ll ever inhabit.
We drown the things we love
so we don’t have to see them rising to the surface.
When a man parts my thighs I want to grip him by the shoulders
like a wolf, feed my hunger til the blood runs dry.
We are all glaciers. We are all colliding with the ship
of someone else’s body.
In Italy they bury lovers side by side in their backyard
along with the vegetables and roses.
The legend goes like this:
when the couple awakens in the afterworld,
they’ve already been reborn.
