the real subject is always you

As far back as I can remember, I dreamed myself

onto pages of sex, you know, things kids thumb through

when the cooler, more restrained adult

world suddenly starts wanting to hug you more,

and French kithing your neighbor underneath your parent’s

bedroom window after they have

gone to bed, feels so rich and heavy,

you can reach into the things you want with her fingers

and lift out of them an infinity of honey.

But these days I think the golden idea of immortality

faith prays about, semi-consciously refers to a permeable and

always expanding veil,

one side shared by the conscious,

the other by the unconscious,

a belief in life after puberty that’s being discovered all the time

inside myself, where any memory I unlock my hands on

can be stretched out and realized across.

Whatever puberty once had on me can now been locked up behind

the trophy case memory unlocks,

and in mine, I tell myself there’s no harm in showing off what

I’m most proud of a little, decorating a space inside me

where I can celebrate who I am, but was.

Because, at the very least, that’s got to be easier than trying to

remember the table manners off of imaginary women, who are partly

versions of me, through my skull.