But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. Twice I have so simply declared myself, have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy, have taken on his craft, his magic.

The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments.

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.

My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right.

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious