BETRAYAL

What I want is the difficult
want of your bones. What I want
is to retrieve the bones
of your breath speaking only the breath

of my name. In the quiet,
in the dark moon of night's
tongue, I want the water running
up the thighs of your

breath, up the corridors of your breathing
into another:
the woman whose breath is escaping
from her hands like wind.

Soon, they will have
no feeling. Soon, there will be
a limbless, still wanting.
Night's violent breath

shimmering to the edge
of her, and her bones will be
dead, will not be as easy
to undress as mine were easy.

Soon, it will be difficult to want
so many hearts at once.
Difficult to know the breath
of only one who mattered

who offered you her name
as a supplicant offers
her stillness
to God.

Soon, belonging will know its difficult
demand, like a hand
without feeling, like a hand
trying to carry the breathing

of one who wanted to know only
the sweet ache of your bones,
who you tossed away
easy as night's dark.

Soon, I will sleep with the breath
of another. Undressing for her
as fire undresses for water,
as water for stone,

as stone for the deep breath
of night's stillness,
the haunting gravity of desire
moving through us as water

moves through light.
Soon, my mouth will whisper
her name like a prayer, the way
your mouth once whispered mine,

the way the moon whispers
telling a white lie to the terrible dark.