thanksgiving

peripheral breathing
pəˈrɪfərəl briðɪŋ

i know my body with brush strokes.
i know when my heat be rising.

i know the woman who constructed the moon with two hands,
with two hands she let
enough crescent nails stain her body
with blunt scabs and silver tattoos
that flood up the strength of her neck
and pooled together into phases of eclipses with no meaning.

now she speak in quiet muscles
lifting up tragedies out of concrete cemeteries
and the granite projection of wordless
poured onto this cursive
born out of carbon and opium,
she’s important
like the circumference
of the earth in one heart step,
she is.

sometimes,
she string yards of lanterns
across the hallway of lit match sticks
burning down six week old candles
and i’d carve out her biography
into the red wick wax
and then one into her back
so she’d never have to see it,
but inevitably have to feel it.

i know when she liberate wind children from her slant jaw.
i know when cold iris blink from the root of their birthstone.

i taught her to speak to me in perfect tongues
where the petals
preserving imagination
paint their stain glass wings themselves
and themselves i call to her
like a voice in the subconscious
of the universe peeling back layers
of dialect changes,
like a wish for things.

she move rhythmic body to the energy
of flames she been feeding
and unzipped her hips
like the burden from her blessing
would spill out from within them
and she would choke on cracked bottles of
surgical needles
and they would take her
unlike a lover
in this framed nighttime
spinning clockwise
like some kaleidoscope deity
patching together each sacred palm
blooming with road maps of soul luck
and swelling of infinity,
so she be quiet.
so she keep silent.
so she let all the secrets
float gracefully
‘til they settle in the
inbetweens,
‘til i can settle with
i is she.

i know she who has a photograph of heaven tattooed on the inside of her eyelids.
i know she who spells beauty with an L for life
i know she who be daughter of dawn bringer.
i know she who breathes.