a prayer

i step into the heat of my own breathing needing
you whom i love against my better judgement
and more than i love living because you are living

each morning comes like someone else’s god
i tumble naked skin against sheet that does not
know me, this is the peace dead prophets tell me is
necessary like: hold fast to that which cannot talk
back for therein lies your truth or whatever.

they say give yourself to no one so it hurts, and i did.
i’ve tried all the methods of suffering and i guess for art
It was pretty. i could trace all the times a person
tried to look only partly in my eyes. i said

go home to your loneliness and I was a hypocrite;
my bed knew two hundred arms but I can’t tell you
how they held me. though still i’ve tried to write
a story of how the world turns the people in it and

it doesn’t work. i’d have a daughter just to tell her
that she’ll fall in love with moments more than the
people who are afraid of them and that is all of us.

what hurts the most is that i’ll never stop asking
if i really want to be here, and for who. i know i can’t
say this but please forgive me, some god somewhere.

i step into the heat of my own needing bleeding
my fear which i love against my better judgement
and more than i love living because fear is living

or else how has it stayed this long damp on these
sheets and feathers where the pillow meets the nape
and kowtows. but at least you’re here and at least
we leave the curtains open now. you like for me
to rise and while shrugging on a t-shirt smile,

embraced by the sun. sometimes i even forget
when you look at me that this star and
the people beneath it are burning.

By Ruby Anderson

Biography: