shark litany (fever dream remix)

for the human forest fire with seawater in his lungs

There is a great white
built into the foundation
dangerously close to her sex.

I have been advised not to feed it.
Something feral in my jaw
takes that personally.

She has the temperament of a
house fire that someone taught to paint.
Blue ink on her fingers.
Five disciplinary reports rolled into a blunt
fat enough to smoke the state back.

She wanted my bite marks
tattooed across her shoulders.
Permanent.
Exact.
Like evidence bagged wrong
because somebody wanted
to keep touching it.

This is the woman who could
make a threat sound hand-carved.
Who could put somebody’s name
in her mouth
and make it need stitches.

I remember thinking:
how romantic.
Unfortunately,
I still do.

Her eyes are too large for the room.
Blue centers.
Green halos.
The locked doors reconsider their loyalties.

She leans in just enough to make
the room remember it has blood.

The shark opens one eye.

My better judgment
is found at 490
without identification.
Damn fool.

Somewhere inside her the ocean has been
throwing furniture since 1997.
No one knows what it wants.
She refuses evacuation.

I sleep easier when the dark is loyal.

There are women who enter a room
and nothing anatomical
happens to the architecture.
No pulse in the walls.
No razor wire learning a second language.
No cameras forgetting who they work for.

Their love arrives housebroken.
Mine never did.

But I wanted the animal in her that could
hear the room bruise before anything broke.
The part of her that would taste the future
going metallic and wake all the way up.

I wanted the monster
under the bed
to know my name.
To circle the fence line all night
with one black eye open
and call that safety.

So I stand there like an idiot
holding concrete flowers.

The shark circles.
She grins.
I show teeth.

The institution begins cutting molars.