Just to sleep at night,
sometimes I hold you from behind and run
my thumb across your gullied fault lines.
Read the book spine of your body.
Your second growth of spine, a love cut you grew up 
like a raised garden of personhood, sprouting
pink flowered scar. Magenta row of rosebuds.
You carry the supine thorns in you, straight across
your heart you dared them to cut you up for good.
For the good of man-kind, to be the kind of man
who is allowed to be joyous and gay. To be okay
You cut and pulled yourself closer to yourself,
Soft covers over your heart, all blood and capillary
waves of relief. Interstate highway of free land reclaimed
indefinitely. My thumb travels miles across your chest,
walks one way and another, slowly and solely in meditation,
in awe of it all, this handful of all, of you. At the edges,
I turn back because there’s so much more to know, better.
Braille poetry of a man stretch like a smile beaming
with pride in the June summer heat. Shirtless like a signature
that dances and spins its way into the most beautiful chosen name.
You’re a birthday card full of love letters to yourself.
Sacred and brimming with secrets so dear you’ve taped
up all the edges for safekeeping and it feels
like a knot beneath my doting fingers. Clay enclave of heart
beating code to me beneath the wall of your chest.
We’re night cot neighboring skin bonding, tiny knocks
back and forth, always asking to come in, come closer.
My thumb walks the gravel holler of your chest
as if to come home. Foothills of hair and sky of freckled star.
Everything about you is North. In the dark,
we are just two lost pieces of Pine Mountain
shifting to meet itself all over again.