By: Carrie Liang
I would unspool my ribs like thread,
if she promised to stitch them into a shroud,
soft enough for love to rest upon.
I would break every bone
to let her gorge herself on their marrow,
if it meant she and I could
build something holy from the wreckage—
rib by rib, a cathedral of us, perhaps,
where her hands are the altar
And my body the hymn.
if it meant she could hold me in the dark,
and we could call it home
where no one could call us unholy.
But they will, because they always do.
After all, what is a love like ours
If not a wound?
a sickness they swear
must be cut from our flesh.
a stain they must scrub from the scriptures,
a fire they’d rather smother than let burn.
and so, they call it ruin instead of reverence.
they will call us unnatural,
spit our names like curses,
avert their eyes when
she tucks violets behind my ears.
they will build pyres from our love letters,
pray for the weight of a man between us,
as if our desire could be rewritten,
as if our devotion could be undone.
they will call it blasphemy,
but we will call it breath,
and with every sideways glance they cast,
she will still press her lips to my knuckles,
lace her fingers through mine,
and I know—
if this is unholy,
then let me never be clean.