The Year of Deprivation

Henceforth how your era shall be known.

Immoveable man, I would rage at you
if you were malleable as seacliffs.
Hell is a pebble
thrown at
the moon, occasionally,
until all its white chalk
breaks off and
floats away.
Powder white, power of
cyclical reflection
joining the dodo bird, the polar bear soon.

This year reduces that rubble
to rubble.

Once, I drank milk.
Mixed with honey,
crouching in your kitchen
until you took the empty carton.
I woke up that night with the vomit of shame
and genealogical punishment in my mouth.
Women don't consume that way,
humans aren't even made to drink milk.

You ran out and in and saved me
scooping my nausea into your hands
the sandy chalk of missing enzymes.
But my deficiency is still
the centerpiece of this story, isn't it? ISN'T IT?

No, it is, and
strange that so much lack
builds such a carnival of artifices.
Fuck you, language, you really fucked me
on this one. I guess I needed you to,
since I wasn't getting fucked in the morning.

Men always told me that the perfect woman
makes love in the morning,
our eyes still sealed
breath hot lashes gums wooly.
I am white satin panties, garters,
boned corsets,
little hands,
disappearing demurity who baked her bones into pie crusts,
the most essential flour for your tongue,
navel flower,
clingy fingernails which burrow into sheets
which you tuck in the sides before we sleep.

I spent half, or more,
of my year of deprivation
in fetal position.

That pull of cello strings is
my vertebrae
snapping into place.