Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs

Sometimes I pronounce aubade: obeyed

for the way this particular desire stumbles

the tongue. Hunger’s vocabulary is a fickle

thing. How many lovers have said that

they adore me, but meant instead they saw

in me a door? A thing to be entered. Language

shifts an image like the light. To lash can mean

both beat & bind. I’m lashed against the bed

by dawn’s red blaze. The whole room welted

tidy by the sky between the blinds. To cuff

can also mean to hold or harm, each word

doubled—body & a body’s shadow. I want

& all at once I flicker beneath you. I beg you

to bruise me & so exchange faggot for fruit.

O, how gentle lust alters a body, conjugates

prey into prayer. The history of handcuffs

is old as myth if memory serves. The legend

goes, Greek hero invented them to steal

prophecy from the mouth of a shapeshifter

god & the story gathered blood from there.

The root of the word religion is a Latin verb

meaning to bind. As in, the worshipper is bound

to their god. Two hands paired in steel or prayer.

When I say obey, I mean we have chosen

the softer side of every verb, dulled the sharp

edge of a memory, sea glass against the tongue.

For the first time, when the handcuffs’ steel

lips unkiss my wrists as morning stains every

surface a fading bruise, I am already free

as the first breath after confession.