Someplace below your clavicle, a perpetual voice sings.

(Fist to the chest, Emet to the heart.) The barrel of a small gun
spins and rolls within your dream—half-awakening—half-tossed—un
breathingly

spilling bad blood into a stream.

It faints slowly. It dilutes. It is inexplicable to you
how his lightened heart submerges
without a sound.

The cadaver sinks, exhales, then sinks again—sinks lower
and you see him from the other side of the river with his lips mouthing over the words: (Love

is a simple thing. Love is a golem. Love is an ending written by
the one who came in
last.)

A water lily stills beside the water as he wipes the Aleph off
using the same finger he wrote it with, as he steals kisses like a boy, as inflammation
grows a fire inside his body

but doesn't carry it.

(When you try to unlearn exhaling, your elbows hit the sands at the bottom,
and the stems of his rib cage are poorly engraved

with the same love.)