the serpent resides coiled in my chest

I hardly know it is still alive until i look at you

until it squeezes tight and chokes me–

I cannot speak.

I cannot name the ways I wish

to settle down and live inside you.

 

who is to say who was created first

with the way we each are always trying

to crawl back inside the other.

 

Love-Of-My-Ribs,

shall we go?

I follow your every footstep like a dog

nose to the dirt, to the soft earth

which beckons us back.

yes, we shall go back, but not yet

and not ever by the way we came.

 

do you look behind?

I don’t; I had no name till I met you

and now I have so much more.

I would not call it holiness

but it feels like

wholeness.

yes, that’s the word

I am comforted in you.

 

no I rejoice in you.

why do you weep?

let me cheer you,

let me dance in the sunset,

in the last day among the perfect leaves

whose fruits we will learn to ache for.

let me put my voice to the first song

Fruit-Of-My-Lips,

let us delight and flee.

 

two Adams. or perhaps two Eves.

I was made a help for you,

and I helped you. we are going

to the field of our inheritance

where blood will soak the dry grass

it is not Eden, but it is home