Alchemy of Desire

Let me be a shape shifter in your name

Your name hand-formed like a clay pot

Layered with honey and pistachios

Like a crisp baklava on the mouth.

Let me fill these broken-open closets

These dark cedar skeleton boxes

With silk and leather and heavy Oxford cotton.

Scribble the xxx,

into your gender box.

Into the place on your chest where the scalpel buried the treasure.

What combination of pigment and baubles

What alchemy of powder and campfire

What potion do I sip like an old fashioned

Fire water,

liquid courage

To become the thing that makes your center molten like the earth.