Brief Landing on the Earth's Surface

Valentine

Valentine It doesn't maner that sooner or later the line ofmy throat will come between us, and the set ofyour jaw will come between us, blueprints ofsmoke in the bedroom and no high racket in the stars. And it doesn't matter that sooner or later my words will be wrong words, they wiJi ruin your food, they will sift through your body like sand, you will grow leaden with the weight, you will be a dumb bag holding back Aoods. And then I'll dance so close to him I might as well have fucked him, and you will dance so close you might as well, and I'll wish 1 hadn't and I'll wish I had, and you will be desert and I will be cracking and parched. And the worms that live in our skin will start eating their way out, there will be spots on the crests ofour backs, spots in the rub and burn ofour bellies, on the smooth linen ofyour cock, in the silky oysters ofmy earlobes, we will be monied as leopards and it won't be lovely. it will be stinking and zoo. And it doesn't matter that one evening sooner than late over bratwurst and schnitzel a fat German frau will start schJumpfing around in your head and a Nazi will microphone cues in my voicebox and bigots and racists will wain on the sheets where we once made love. And men from my past will begin to arrive. and one will take my clothes and one will take my name, .8 and then my eyes will go, and then my voice, after awhile I'll have no arms, no feet, my legs will be sore stubs, I'll barely be able to writhe my way to the ward to be mended, it will take months, it will take years. And when you come to visit me, when you stand at the door ofmy room all rosy and separate and shaved, ('II see wreck, I'll see accident, and when you look a[ me you won't see fiesta, you won't see meat and poratoes, you'll see one stingy tube ofsugar water drip, dripping from a vein. Heart, it doesn't matrer that shadows lie coiled in our armpits, that they rise up and follow us, that they love us more than our bodies, right now it's night. They're sleeping. Right now the moon is as fine as a baby's fingernail up in the sky and a tiny thread hangs from the hem ofa long black skirt, one tug and it all unravds, one tug and I'm naked, it's Christmas, it's Valentine's Day, it's March, it's April, it's Hallowec::n. ...