your fingers, slender + threadbare, are the kind that were sculpted to open safes. i meet you there, with a lock in need of a gentle waltz with a crowbar. your hand steadies itself against my shoulder, the architecture of my bones holding its breath + crumbling under your touch. i swim on contact, reduced to blood + visionary + calcium. you’ve painted me a crime scene + i long to thank you, frame you, with a slip of fingerprint to hip, a fiery branding. a staked claim. we’d look lovely surrounded by a gold-plated picture frame, ornate as we laced fingers + leaned against the wall, overlooking our linoleum palace. i’d kiss your hand + you’d fold your affection like a paper crane, placing it in my palm. i’d call it lapis lazuli + you’d smile. 

* * * 

you live next to the cemetery, i soon learn. our second encounter is one stained with blush + chance + —do you want to come over - i have too many herbs to make bread for one - join me?— i grin from beneath a sheath of cobwebs. we are cleaning a mausoleum; i step on spiders while you invite them to drink from your glass. you wonder if i need directions to your home + i ask you to carve me into a map. you are here stamped against my heart. your fingers, thin + fox-like, the kind perfect for kneading dough, trace the inside of my wrist, landing on my pulse. —this is where i live - you’ll want to arrive before the cicadas, before the sun— + i remember the directions scrawled in heat like a tattoo, like something of value. for me, it is a relic, + it is guarded by a velvet rope. together, we are something avian: unable to be tied down, restrained. 

* * * 

each day, i let the marble tombstones guide me to your front door. week after week, the balmy scent of rosemary scrapes down our wrists as we grasp each other, like it is all that matters.month after month, your tears of joy + pain water the valleys in the crook of my elbows as i soothe you. my laugh, bubbling + laced with sunbeams, sheds light on the dark parts of you: the negative space between your shoulder blades, your liver, the sadness that sometimes creeps out from behind your corneas. i know it all well, + i rest comfortably with my ankles beneath yours + your lips murmuring against my carotid. call us symbiotic, but this is not your average science lesson. there is no taxidermied fowl in this institution. instead: your ribcage, a venue. your laugh, a treasure. me, a docent, a denizen, who walks your halls, who sweeps your floors, in desire, in awe.