A Caged Thing Freed

Your mouth slips out a sound, a sound of the world dying and reborn again,
an utterance of expanding space, time, sound flinging out of your warm

fleshy mouth, out from your pink oyster mushroom lips and for a second,
with your back burning white in the afternoon sun, you become an arctic fox

rolled over a damp mossy log. Your paw-hands dressed in skin stretch along
my many grooves like a spill, round red knuckles flushing pale at the grip.

The unfathomable patience we commit to, to prolong this shared annihilation,
to remain inside the brink. I will take my time with you — trace your temples,

your chest, every palm crease, the constellation formed inside your spine’s bow,
the cool flint of your ankles. Through an open window, in the sun’s fullness,

a wasp sneaks in — dusting shadows over your nose-bride while our bedsheets
knot themselves up. Here, I can hear your animal heart: bang bang boom.