This Person-Sized Sky with Bruise,

simultaneously orange and violet

(though my eyes are closed), is

either my inner color (that covered mirror)

or simply dusk.

An opaline sheet

pulled because the night is ashamed

to come in front of everyone,

blacking out in joy.

Too shy to spill its milk on the stained

tablecloth of strangers

as I have. When it’s finally dark

outside, it’s finally

loose inside and the doubleness

of things seems too true to be good:

my way and the highway.

Night. It has two hands

I can use. Its fingers in a plum

too ripe not to split.

I had to split it. It was so much

itself—bloody flesh,

wild purple skin. A fistful

so lush it was almost imaginary,

smelling of love, it didn’t matter whose.