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a body attached to the moon making circles around a bad idea, someone else's sticky gift in waistband, big little offering. four and a half turns to get home, precious warm. out of the car in one motion, two if winter, two to five if nerve pain. house shuffle walk with a reason inside it. forty-two-then-three leaning on testing, silent scream under the x-ray while candy goes in, no one warned oversweet has a color and when you mix it with your blood it swirls wrong. christmas small talk plus tone shift, there is no code for queer and no code for borrowing, they'll just call you hollowed. no code for being blessed by the moonlight then quick up the stairs, an already-set scene every time. the heart is a circle cupped warm. methodical wiping, every precise thing plus softness.
               i am not a hopeful person but i lay down
                                                         and hope my own arms around me, a holiness the church could never. if gawd looked down now they would see i'm hungry, see me keep trying, depress the plunger then hold the question. it doesn't matter how many times i haven't met you we talk all the time. when you were born i was three-thousand miles away and when you were born i was on a train in the wrong direction and when you were born i came right away, i knew you so soon. i've spent my patient hours on my back. what i knew would happen didn't happen. what i knew about hope stayed. i will never know you. i am sticky with hope, it never goes.