kingdom animalia

we fester, feast on the banquet of our bodies
like divine liturgy on the tongues of sinners,

become holes in each other’s cheekbones,
our mouths running like catapults of impatience.

when you looked up from molding the underside
of ambiguity into a tourniquet, you told me that

my hair was a lion’s mane. i told you that my
mistakes read like grocery lists:

i tamed the pieces of you that curled bones
into fists
into jaws
into empty convictions.

maybe the flesh wounds trailing down our arms
could lead us to the other side of forever, but we

are both caged lions:

animalistic and gnawing elephant tusks
to rubble since the dawn of time.