I begin to lose myself inside of you
when you are too long inside of me;
dangling, ponderous, petulant,
a little too comfortable in my own skin.
A little too freckled.
A little too flayed.
Slowly, you peel me back,
inch by loving inch,
deshelling, deShelleying me
from who I once could have been,
until all I am
is husky, dour, sentimental
chocolate from the Melakan soil,
somewhere burned, everywhere spurned
by desire, destiny and Death.
I forget what it means to be banished.
I lose my sense of where it means to be liminal.
All I have left
is chocolate from the Melakan strain,
oil from the heat of my melting brow,
toil from the strain of knowing I do not know
just how closely I am being watched.