Metastasis

The wooden boards beneath me

are vibrating

and in the seconds between the rumbles

I feel you.

You,

always in the spaces

swelling with

all the pride your father

found in the war

and your mother poured into your lips

with the morning orange juice.

Sweetness is in between

the bullets.

Breath in my ear before

the sting and the bite

of veracity.

Poets are counting the beats

between the first time

we said we’re flawless

and this afternoon.

Those inches crawl past my ears,

bed bugs in between the pillows

barely wrong.

Once those scratches

become ambient,

once I’m accustomed

to feeling like I am not

a part of my skin,

inhabiting you instead,

once I am ready to succumb,

you are back

and scores of us are just this

because we never understood

the plural.