Desire

Desire

The woman you don't see
is frail, from the thin
blue veins of her wrist
to the birdcage of her ribs.

Delicate and fixed
there against the corners
of the room,
she waits, eyes stained
like plums, like a child
with a knife, teeth small,
straight and ready.

From her world of bone,
you would think
she is a ghost,
patient as only
the dead can be.

She watches as I fall
always undone,
fold like dress, lock
and unlock, take you in
where the finite resides.

But even she is tired
of standing, of building
weakness in the soles
of her feet,
tired of learning time
through the tick
of her fingers,
distance through the compass
of her arms.

She stalls in me;
I twist and crack.
She is always falling
like a stone
from somewhere inside,
heavier than she looks
but knowing hunger,
the dead weight of desire.