Yowling comes up
where we were joined
and I
severed my limbs
from yours

When I left you
after you fucked me after
I fucked you
after you wanted more
than I had after
I hurt myself
gouging things into my skin and
you couldn't save me
from what I'd quietly swallowed before you got there
and the way it raged
from my hands to my flesh to my hands

After we flew across continents after
you called me
bitch in a buddhist country
where people hung their mouths
in shock at the foreign foreign language
of loathing after you said
if I wanted to ride ahead of you
I would have to be faster
after I was
and you couldn't believe you couldn't catch me
I flew through the streets possessed by inhuman fury.

After I almost crushed myself on the front lawn
with the refrigerator
which I couldn't wait for your help
to move and after you told me on the last night
of the 8 and a half years
as I was moving out
that I never let you
feel like a man.

After I suggested we combine the only ingredients
left: pancake batter
and bok choi after we couldn't gag
the mess down our throats
after you felt bad that you couldn't make
the culinarily impossible, work
and after no amount of my saying that
it was my suggestion and
not your skill that lacked
could quell your self doubt

After we cried in each other's warm arms by the bay
and you told me it was okay that I was too afraid
to play frisbee, swim in the ocean,
be with people, hike aggressively, drive a car,
use a chainsaw, hammer properly
or do anything that didn't mean
my mind was ahead of my body
after you gave me a cactus
because it was strong like me

After I cut the end of my finger off
and you held up the bit and
said it really isn't that much, see?
and after I told you to
just go without me
and take the soup I'd made
that the squash would have
gone into had I chopped it
instead of my finger
because you couldn't
hold me

After you forgot the only good sex I felt we had ever
had
after you felt hopeful when
I said I would try what I didn't want to
after you derided my dreams after I
encouraged you to follow
your heart and cry only to find
that it hurt you and made you feel weak
after you
remembered me to my body
and I came back from the dead
only because you saw me and knew how to really love

After we joyously watched mice playing
together for hours
in the small triangle of grass
near our smaller room in Manhattan.

After the first night
you took me home to your
cabin in the woods
far from town
in your pickup truck
after I suspiciously eyed the axe against the wall
and you laughed and
said I won't cut you up with it
I promise, after I believed you more than
I have ever believed anyone
after I wanted to give you
what I had protected from
all other people
and found that I couldn't find it
and instead gave you a hollow
shell with no animal inside,
after I couldn't tell if you had noticed
for years couldn't tell if you knew

After you tried to give the monkeys
the bananas they had missed
and they screeched like maniacs
and tore at you
with their hands, locked up for life,
and I wanted and didn't want to laugh

After your blue eyes shone
like oasi
lighting up the desert in which they were born and
consequently every dark corner
I crawled out of in Illinois
with deep internal injuries
with a boy
who fearlessly jumped dirtbikes
and into water
and who wanted someone
who he thought was me
who I had evacuated years before
(yet also that boy was gone
only his waves remained
in the pools of his eyes
(he was more than enough for me
had he not already sunk too deep
into the water to find)

After you called me by your sister's name
after I swallowed my brother's name at you
and you never knew and
I never told you
and it wasn't fair of me

after I asked for less rancid butter
on my/your
wood-stove cooked oatmeal
and you obliged we
always catered to my/your appetites.

and after the big water fight where we were laughing
and running around and through the house and windows
and locking the door and laughing and laughing
and the stoic neighbors were horrified
and considered calling the police
after you skinned deer in the shower and
it was the most reverent and loving way
I'd ever seen you touch anyone
after we lived seperate lives
in the same house and after
we were so palpably tender
halfway across the world
and after we drove through the night
making up songs at the top of our lungs
and after you broke
a lot of things; the phone, the window, the bike, the
chair, my tentative paperclip toothbrush holders, my
impromptu lint sculptures, my fragile cardboard
excuses for furniture,
my hope to ever really touch you

After my theories about living failed
and I found living
beyond thinking about living
after I left you

her face accrued
your/my features
She stares back at me from our photographs
now she is your background
ring and everything
that I always swore against
placed in the skin that was our skin
and my body is cut free
loose, resurrected
uncertain of its place in the world
but asking
for someone
to really
touch