The staples nestled into your scalp
guide my fingers like abandoned railroad tracks
to the place from whence your thoughts depart.
What dark cargo freight you now, little engine?
Upon which boxcars have your stained and swollen
knuckles rapped, and which granted you entry?
To where do you stowaway tonight?
Your body and your thoughts weigh heavily
against my breast—your truths are iron ore,
and my hands too gentle for mining. So I hold you
in the cradle of my hips instead. I would never hurt you
like they do, but it is my doing nonetheless.
The first time we came together, Leviticus 19 fell quiet
from your lips as you slowly revealed my miles of
painted skin—still, you worshiped at the altar of me.
I do not understand the place from which you come,
Brother Love, but I understand the needs of the flesh.
And while needles have been used to pull different things
through us, in the end, they’re all sutures.
This is my way of stitching you back together,
the only prayer for healing I ever learned.
Tell me lover, where lives your God?
In a windowless basement apartment like this one,
I fear. Do you praise Him on your knees
like you do me, or are the hymns I inspire in you
unfit for consecrated soil? When you leave here,
do you pray for forgiveness, for me? Or am I
beyond the graces of your Savior?
Hunger draws you to my door night after night,
but the dawn baptizes your retreat in self-reproach.
The bed we share—sheets twisted and now cold—yawns before me
like an early grave, and a one-way passenger rail to the place
you fear the most. I search the face in the mirror for evidence of
unholiness, of the devil’s work you suspect is at hand,
but see only a woman.
Cierra Lowe-Price, 2022