The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love Letters from a Burning Planet by MJ Gomez

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Cuneiform

Again, I take your name into my mouth, the syllables disintegrating
               into something like sweetness.
               See? Water into wine. Again,
I take your name into my mouth and swallow.

Because I wanted
               my arms around you.

               Because saying I loved you as a man
instead of a boy
               might make us more real.

Because every love song is an elegy
               for itself, and we have learned to speak
               the way thirst does—our mouths filling with longing
                                                                                        to forget
                                                                                        our bodies.

The body dreaming of bursting
                                             into flames. Gold spilling
                                                            out of the award-winning man on fire.

It shouldn’t have been this hard to be holy,
               and we know the flesh around the tailbone
               was how we learnt to lie.

Turn off the light and see what blankets us.
               Turn on the light and see how we hold onto all that black.

               Outside—the sky as both dawn and dusk. Clouds
cover and uncover the Sun.

               Outside a lit match, flickering. As if constantly waking
from a nightmare.
               Darkness surrounding the blinking eye.

Tell me this: a match is always a match, even as it burns out
               for good—but is it enough
               to be nothing but the shape of our bodies?
Is it enough to be within and without?

Maybe we call it longing because we define ourselves through
               distance.

I’m half the world away. I’m at the edge
               of this parsec tearing holes in nebulas
knowing you’ll meet my eyes
               when we’re dead. I’m right next to you,
finding every way to leave
                                               the world between us.

My body behind yours,
your neck drenched with late afternoon,

I reach for you and pull away all at once.
                                   My arms forever
                                   at your shoulders,
                                                                      wanting.

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