salem lives in you

You watch girls
like witches, as if
the opening of their Jupiter-
mouths will be enough
to condemn them to some
global podium of wrong.

Well? My bones are stars
(and maybe that’s why
eating feels like the meeting
of too much gravity and ash),

the Capricorn dots in
the alveoli of my lungs
making sure every breath
I breathe is frigid and black
like the ice in my fingernails –
they let me fly, but…

I’ll let you in on a secret:
it isn't magic to die early
or late on the doorstep
of a senile, nostalgic world –
so in longing for a past
that it repeats, repeats, repeats—

because most would call it mercy.