Salve (Poem)

You can feel the hardness in your chest,

as you try,

like Sisyphus,

to push this stone up that hill,

to make your deal with gods,

and demigods,

and all the lesser deities that trade in blood.

To love another,

where you pulled this soft and tender heart from a sacred place,

like a garden,

like a womb, pregnant,

a seed allowed its opening.

And there is such beauty,

yet still you watch for teeth.

Your subterfuge, a pretext,

its own evasion in search of everything retractable,

all fangs, and claws, and shiny, polished, blades.

And every night,

you call your lover for inspections like a soldier.

And you run your hands over their soft flesh,

a reluctant butcher,

waiting like the most dogged of dogs,

for the fox to take his cutting instruments into the hen house.

And you will shake through the tears of a tired hope

that somehow this one is different,

and did not come with all the pieces that would rip and tear.

And for once,

like a soft salve,

his skin is smooth and does not leave fine slashes on the skin of your hands,

when your fingers intertwine,

and his flesh pressed against yours is more like savage rapture than slaughter.

Yes, he feels like hope, and is so much softer, and more malleable than the hard wooden handle of an unswung axe screaming inside your chest.

bvk, 2020.