(no subject)

Every opening is also a breaking.

That’s how doors get opened, after all: holes in walls, violations of security, barriers thrown wide so just anyone can get in.

More openings, each in a different part of the wall, and I in turn open others, coming in with tanks and undermining long years of safety and routine. You open to me a little, I open to you a little, and with reciprocity and normalization and time we go from castles to open fields amidst a storm of rubble.

When the dust settles all we’ll reliably have is that rubble and maybe a better view.

I come in with love, always with love, but mine is the love that destroys.

How many butterflies can you fit in a jar?

My ribs have always been a cage around longing: a trap for a throng of restless crowded seethe and the chaos of bright wings that press against creaking bone.

Each flutter writes a name over and over. So many wings, so many names, and me merely a calcified cavern to house it all. This is what mom meant when she said, I worry you let your relationships inform your identity too strongly.

O beloved, you are not one of many, but instead one creaking groaning inch of space prising my ribcage open to your light.