“Write something about this,” you said in the car, violin strings the sound of longing & I was lost in a cerebral vortex of past & future & the constellations of wolf spirit.  You claim to be tattooed on my back in black ink.  Your hands on my skin are as warm as bathwater, at a level that doesn’t drown my esophagus, Pythagoric triangles – how you + me = we.

I lost you last time somewhere between papyrus & warfare, when the white corporate men killed all the Indians & Mother Earth wailed.  I let you in the labyrinth of my head where gods live & men fear to tread, and you clawed up my neck with echoes of scars that have been there before.  These lines will never be as beautiful as when you look at me.  You sleep with your reddened mouth soft like raspberries on silk sheets & fur blankets.  I don’t know how to cover the purple of my throat when daylight cloaks the night.

If I should die before I wake, this time bury me in a sarcophagus of carved wood and mint leaves & I will inscribe your eyes in my sacred Book of the Dead.