“from flower to flower, along the horizon of trees, my beautiful butterfly (fake mayfly, most probably eternal) finally liberated from my desire will disappear from view — while a last summer sun, burning, faded, falls like a dead leaf. then you return, you contemplate my tears, and you reproach me sweetly. ‘if only you had cut yourself free from your bindings! alas, it is too late now….’ temptation. - then thoughtfully, take me in a spasm or will it to stroke me, slowly and surely with an eternal wing.” (claude cahun) what if we laid down together, traded petal bracelets from wrist to wrist. what if we prayed as one bug. what if you looked and all i was was light? everything i learned about devotion, i learned from the soil — plucking beetles off the leaves one by one with a bucket of soapy water. not sure whether to be flowers or pass as leaves — slippery mutant, how you practice so slow. see the bed like before, see it now, a tulip laid to rest. all this time, thought i was slathering it with weird goo. turns out, this is a way with the world, and the sun still rises. tulips turn their head toward the sun, still. all of this all might be a practice of remembering. the first time i slept in the bed i woke to find the tree and the sun on my face and did you know? when the veins go puffy i go. the iron bell rang a sound like comin’ home. slowly and surely, a picture of my feet toward the sun like i’m coming. where to begin, with the garden? that’s why i’m writing. it plays like thumbnails, sunnails — bright spots through a gum stretched murk. claude, you keep me keeping time through a practice of edging. thresholds are greeted, crossed and flanked with your wings. remaining unpinned, squirm like not held under thumb — sssslip out and dissolve boundaries. glittering — you condensation, you dew. i’m coming home like queer kingdom in the sky. body-medium is celestial. feral. soothed by unfinished-ness and adorned by language that licks. a refusal to work like limbs and more like tendrils. caught in a net of slippery kelp i’ll — like a small prayer, a napkin-tucked secret…a skin softly and little by little splayed open under the sail. the choreography of reaching, through grief (darkness) toward sun (elsewhere, often blinding) …here grief could be any contention, and the sun, possibility. tulips are screaming inside closed petal lips as they push their heads just above dirt. unearthing climax of beltane, of releasing cows, of archangels dropping sachets of cherry blossom petals on our heads. maybe this is what it has always been. tulip-like-blooming, coming up for air. an honorary phallus. dear claude, it’s time to drag my body into the shower. i’m sore and i just realized there is egg yolk all over my face. earlier i felt turned on but i cried. to look at myself looking at you — is it possible to be in your periphery? you, an angel laid across my lap? dear claude, imagine a bed shaped like the thumbs of god to hold you and me. the fit of the warm spots would be so ideal...imagine being held that good. being held so good you believe in yourself every fucking night. i am of all that came before me and all that will come after. i turn the page and find that yah, you were turned on by wet kelp too.