I don’t want the sting of someone with a historylike my own. I don’t want the other half of my knuckle bone.The beloved is elastic, a switch for another shore,my face on both sides of the drachma.If only a god’s tongue has no beginning or end,what of the bones scored for the bonfire to read?Even when I was young, I could move thingswith my mind, wanted to be imperviousto fire, though now I love the days I scorchmy wrist & breath spasms in my throat,telling me I am here in my 24^th year& joy is blistered before it is peeled.Joy is pickling in a clay pot in the backyard,brine smuggled from the mainland,delicious because it smacks of what is left behind.I seek bloodless pleasures. This cannot be impossible;I am not comfortable with the question.The potted flowers droop like the eye of the first boywho wanted me—when he took me into the closet,I saw the veil you speak of—& just behind it,a girl dragging her spear like a steel tail.Then I woke with all my hands & feet.& to God knows where, I ran.