• Embarrassed, I resist
• words like “grief” or “beloved”, words
• worn nakedly by thrift-store porcelain dolls
• desperate to return to god like the penis
• i conceal from neighborly lesbians
• a ghost awaiting its second and final death
• falling forward in the yoke of a body without sensation
• drunkenly remembering its palace, its gilded shell,
• its grinning hope for being there with bells on—just once more—
• to hear blood and nerves ringing the spirit
• with the divine hum of immediacy