to bear christ on clean sheets

I can feel the shadows moving across my body in the moonlight

And I want to ask him

“What does it feel like to have my body? To hold it, wholly, within the palms of your two unmarked hands?”

To me my skin has always felt like a strangers coat

Half forgotten on the rack and full of someone else’s stories

Threadbare.

I don’t ask him.

But he touches me like someone would touch a marble statue, centuries old

Something other minds have cherished but few

Dared to hold.

Like something holy.

But there’s nothing holy about my bristleback

My hair shirt turned inwards.

A body that created a soul twice over,

Marked and stretched for the violence of growing life,

Etches in tree bark.

He is holy.

I don’t know what being close to god feels like

But I think I see it in his eyes when his body

Is pressed on mine.

Friction so strong I feel like kindling

I feel like a flame licking.

He leaves his own stigmata on both of my breasts

Bruises flourishing like roses, simple and tender as teardrops.

I love him.

I drink him.

The color of clover honey and sweet on my tongue.

Ambrosia is the taste of his sweat

From the nape of his neck.

Dark chocolate and whispers.

I feel him spill across my stomach.

Anointed.

Let me stay here.

I would choose tap water from the palms of his hands over any other blessed spirit.

I touch his body like a prayer.

40 hail mary’s

9 times rethinking the divine.

Because he was not made by anything less

Than gods own hand.

I never wanted to be consumed by fire, life, or love but let him consume me.

Let me stay here.

Let me live here.

Let me love here at the end of this lit cigarette

Where together we become ash

Pulsing with the ember

Smoke rising toward the stars.