“My idolatry: I’ve lusted after goodness. Wanting it here, now, absolutely, increasingly… I suspect now that lusting after the good isn’t what a good person really does.”
Bonded
It is late enough for your whiskey-broke baritone
to ask how long this stew should simmer, how much longer
the kitchen needs.
After that, how much longer
will it take me to finish the story,
to write open the ice I can't crack.
How much longer
I love you
when language stretches
harrowed schedules.
We lack a verb
that asks nicely
for nothing.
No honesty unbludgeoned
by longing when we crave an equation
one can hold against an other.
A record of wrongs
becomes a recipe.
If fear is a failure
to thrive, wherever we stand
four feet remain outside a circle.
Two pairs of wanting-in.
I touch a clementine rind coiled atop
the counter. Witness carrots bubbling,
bobbing like toddler fists. You stir the pot
as my pen pickaxes paper.
Celebrate the bond & the
bondage, these marks round our wrists,
fresh singe of chains we jangle together.