The Burning Place

These godless hours remain
the mind’s faithful partner.
And from the only body I’ll have,

I watch your motion, I watch you let me in.

Sontag recognized love is about submission.
Like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing
that any moment the other person can walk off

with your skin, she wrote.
If red is what I wear to dinner with you
to protect the skin I should give up.

If I say what you refuse to feel

and gladly take you to the burning place.
Where there is no you or I
and our veins, like graves, are opening

for what will open in us.
We start and finish one another with a kiss,
a look. We do it ruthlessly and all the time.


-- Alex Dimitrov