Dear Adam

Toshi Casey

Threw you off!

Hoicked my knees and slid out

nude, indecent, immodest—liberated from you and your god,

but after the interceding years of being without,

would I embrace you now like a lynx or a parsnip root

the way I embraced the moment

I crouched and my cheeks flushed

at the bottom of the fig tree as Eve’s leaf

was placed by your hand?

Knowing I spoke too loudly, too proudly?

That as you and she gave birth to Shame,

I gave birth to the heat of my solitary tangles?

Admitting a bit of perspective on the matter

of our failed relationship—yes,

I tried to drop your mouth

and your manhood, godhead, jargon jaw,

by increments and carve you down

to get us seeing eye to eye.

I didn’t think it fair, all that extra favor,

being we were made of the same, earthy stuff:

dark and thick and fulsome, full smell of green,

of wild mushroom, of titmouse fur coughed up by owls,

of seedy bird shit, but yet even so I am waiting for you

to tell me all you wanted was a bit of rib, a piece of sacrifice.

I am waiting for you to tell me no moment passed

when putting up with my need to howl

might have been worth the risk

of losing sovereignty over that territory

into which we were both born naked.

I am waiting for you to tell me

there is something else left

besides this ecstasy

digesting

my own heart—

Lilith