|
from Falling Past Love by Tobin James Mueller |
||
| ArtsForge Main Page Art Galleries MusicForge WordForge VisionForge Collaborative Works Marketplace Free MP3s |
||
|
|
||
|
Puzzle People
|
facing each other like unlucky mirrors, fragments of infinity reflected between, you touch me along my broken edges and i trace my fingers over your jigsaw scars. piece by piece we are dismantled, each by the other's attentive hands. i've no skin left to safeguard me. it's all been laid among the pile of puzzle pieces, bits of self we've placed between our kneeling frames. you reach inside, inside, and find the heart, the lung, the deeper part up past my vocal chords, my cerebrum, your hands become finger puppets behind my eyes. this is no metaphor, this gesture. it is real, this reach. this everything in. giving, taking a soft curve from the heap, you place it where my appendix used to be. i take, give a cutaway from my sternum and it fits you like a badge. we place pieces from the pile, one, two, after the other, completing this riddle, us, leaving gaps and seams and happy overlays and spaces left for entering. swallow me swallow, in, breathe you breathe, out you, me by these new formed hips given, taken we float into pieces above, below, as this sparking constellation contracts like a womb. grip my, our mouth, fingers in you, our teeth, and feel the vibration of the waters we trade, singing as we drown. in drying pools we leave behind more than stains. more than love tattooed. one easy moment, the everything-we replacing the puzzle of the world with something greater than an answer. and from you, i this miracle we like loaves and fishes welling: pieces left over, still on the bed. too much self to fit back into place. |
|
text © 2004 Tobin James Mueller
|
 |