confession

The Bob Marshall Wilderness is comprised of over 1,000,000 acres of protected wilderness located on stolen tribal lands in the U.S. state of Montana. It is the third largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states.

there are knives
at the edge of your beauty.
you carved our names on me 
as i was leaving,
scalpel swift	   and sweet.
a decade and ten thousand 
years after, i am still bleeding –
fine droplets
carried back to your mouth 
on the necks of great herons.
i have knelt elsewhere,
wholly unashamed.
still, absent the smell and taste of you, 
i am never transformed by the prayer.
oh, the ways i have dug my fingers 
into the hollows of you –
come away with god 
ground under my nails.
unwavering	   devout,    
i wear your memoir like skin
that craves the knife again

.