instead of telling you my name / I will unravel my hands from my pockets / and show you what I have lost / those little eternities know me best / they dig their eager claws into my tender belly / and call me to be hungry / I am not ready / I am a removal / I often do not believe morning when it tells me it will arrive with newness in its small mouth / like the steady light of home turning the front porch into a lighthouse / I am uncertain / so do not consider it a blade / to your throat / when I tell you that I am unsure if our eternity will outlive the others / give pain a body / and it will press your arm between your shoulder blades / until you cannot hold who you love anymore / I’ve given pain a whole country / I have tilled its fields and fed the children / until they were plump and perspiring / I fashioned crude knives from steel  / and taught them to dance with the killing thing resting patient in their teeth / something I meant to learn myself / I’ve waited and waited and waited so long and now all I know is surrendering / I am frail and bleached / now I eat only what pain gives me / and slowly / in cool, fragmented light / I am forgetting your face

William Bortz is a writer and editor from Des Moines, Iowa. His work has been published in Luck Magazine, 8 Poems, Folded Word, Empty Mirror, The LOVEbook, and others.