WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH WHAT YOU KEPT?

i.
your mouth, of course, because it is always the answer and what to answer when you answer what you are and who and how you have eclipsed your own thighs and how they fill with yellow light or a yellow something else

ii.
when you are bright, and yellow, bright yellow, and not ashamed like a bird can be because flight is and is and always was yours for the bright yellow taking

iii.
you have filled your mouth with love to be known as a full knowing a fool gleaning a full how and why and the body lust left you with before it could be lust (couldn’t it? aren’t you grieving? aren’t you grief, a grief neck, grief tongued?) What was in your mouth? what stayed there? how many more m i n u t e s h o u r s b o x e s o f d a y s can you fill with hope; with dirt; with hoping dirty fingers? have we touched? are we touching? can we stop touching what touching touched, touches, does touch, will touch when want is a wide flower that neither swallows nor kills? i love you with the full of my mouth

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (after? alongside? Audrey Niffenegger)

because I
have come with you, darling (where you
are time and everyone, in

time), looped back to find you, been
lonesome in your leaving a cup of my skin
loosed upon what the world might see of secrets:

I was young, once. I was young when he wasn’t
[this is not the breaking

news]. because I
have come with you, darling; danced in your
leaving-me, hanged [well, no] in your leaving me

hanging. I don’t want to tell the reader how
much we fuck, time and I. me and
time. there’s so much sex

in that book! there’s so much sex
in me! me and time fuck
until we become one person [again];

until we break
[again a]part. what is time
if not sex? is what sex
not if time? recursions

flirt with me across the room; time is an open marriage;
I am so loyal
to the shes I still was.

the shes, the sheets, the sheets of shes
travel with me, across
time and not space. time and

not sex. banging
drums of queering unqueering queering again wedding:
I am a wife, here.

I am always a wife.
time is time is getting married. because I
have come with you, darling--- because we

are here, for now---
because we’ll arrive---
time is holding a ring.

Elizabeth Hassler (she/her) is a white/queer femme/multiply neurodivergent writer and community organizer who is grateful to live on Wiyot land, in Arcata, California. Her poetry is about body and play, Recent work can be found in Wordgathering and a few other places. She hosts Disability Creativity Workshop: https://tinyurl.com/DIS-CREATE