[I move through a forest cracking ribs]

‍

to make more of her.               All these almost women

but no man to anoint them real. Isn’t that it? How we move

           a dancefloor unanointed, un-manned –

‍

                                                           I see men

           who tried make to me from their ribs

in places they aren’t, in people with different faces.

‍

           Thought I’d double myself in poems

to make more of me. I wanted to speak to me, to see my face

                       seeing my face more clearly. I protect by

           obscuring, to disfigure myself unrecognizable, to make new

versions of the same. I look so ugly-jealous. She sees

‍

           something in me, a pyrite glint set in rocks

she’ll pocket. All over her house, altars. I sit at each one

                       looking. I don’t dream of the dead anymore

           but I’m sure they’re still around. She dreams more, now.

‍

                       I have sat down with each man I loved

to tell them I’ve changed, they appear to me

           with hindsight. In each dream, they sit quiet

and eat to spite me. They fill and fill, I watch. I wanted them

‍

           to multiply me in their image. I wanted them to want

several of me at once and each diverted their gaze, so I found others

                       to bend me in their hands.

‍

When we close

           into each other’s bodies, we seal microdistances,

collapse unrecognizable and dazed in sex in a room

                       of only our breath. I build houses there

‍

to choose from. You can have a room in each one,

           a room for only this closeness, a room for

                                   silence that clings to each tacked frame.

I build houses for she and I with each rib I cracked

‍

                       to make more of her, of each of my ribs

           broke open & emptied of marrow, building houses

                                   we become doors to, opening for the other –