I Do Not Go

Horrible summer – heat

smeared across my eyeballs like

Vaseline. Skin dripping

loneliness. Bones under my dress

urging I press against someone too

put away from me to touch. Sin

is the distance we cross to reach –

or the crossing, I am not certain which –

but it calls us. Constant,

constant hungry bones

under my dress. Or is that

a soul under my bones? Or is that

merely lust? And meant to carry us.

I do not go. Isn’t it just lust?

I tell myself yes.

It feels like holiness.

I tell myself yes.

I do not go.

Marylisa W. DeDomenicis © 2004