The truth: I’ve spent too much time imagining.
A different earth, where?
This isn’t all what we were. All I was. Nights when
I forget the winters.
Where I grew up. Darkness—silence stayed untouched.
I forget the garbage bags
of clothes my grandmother bought for us kids
from garage sales.
Bargain bins. Then wet summer air, clouds above me.
I remember.
On the news there is another drying lake. I chose
to love again.
Another man. We cannot find the end of our story.
Stories to parse.
Through language like some distant memory.
Like we own it.
I look up the word Gospel to feel weight.
-spel meaning news, stories.
& I know we have plenty, always more to come.
Centuries ago,
in Old English, people mistook their word for good; gōd
to be God. Gospel traced
to some good news, more god stories. That’s all. That remains.
Tonight, there is the man
& me. Bitten sacrament thighs. We love this body.
So much we have indulged.
To have outdone us. This time again. Like slipping
on a T-shirt that housed
someone else. To feel sheltered through old sweat
stains. A stranger
produced inside it, before I did. Before a kid from school
recognized.
It was their shirt all along. Ours. Before my lies. Before my
body denuded.
There is no God-awful. To hold without engulfing.
Old shames.
Warning waxed. Leg after itchy leg under sheets
warmed by him & me.
There are things we have. To worry about come
the morning.
The truth: I too mistook goodness to be God.
The truth.
Was the other way around. Some days I still forget.
To remember.
I refused to wear that shirt again. How many of my belongings
have been belonged
in perpetual motion. This old earth. Stories & news.
I kiss the man
in pursuit of being. Warmed. How many bodies can wither
into one.