[PIGMENT—]
Pigment
-stripped,
we watch
clockwork
inwards spool
scattering,
the pulling
on found wrists,
copper filaments
go gastric, bounding,
how the heat
arouses a gasp,
stifled as we haunt
our own hybridity.
The bright infinite.
The absent I.
There you are.
Here I come, again.
OF SILVER VAPOR
In the night you wake with your sweat collected, curdled
in the soft hollow of your throat like a jewel, or the bows tied
at the end of the sutures that made my body glow for weeks,
a grim corset. Mind blotted by guilt, you reach for me blindly,
atonement a sour thing best sought after dark, in the dark.
Desire does its work of warding off the stench of the dead—
you are forgiven, amen, with three crooked fingers, two open arms,
a pale and welcoming breast. Your ghosts banished to other realms,
for now—a slow procession of silver vapor. In the morning, I rise,
draw the heavy curtains back, allow the dark its gentle exodus.
Light cascades over the dusty floorboards, erases the eaves
of your sleeping face. Were that I held such power—to lay
a hand upon your troubled brow and at once render it unsallowed,
immaculate. Holy and blind, light with but a shadow to guide it.
Shannon Hozinec's writing can be found in DIAGRAM, Thrush, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Pittsburgh.