Heirloom Rifle

For Rick
The present has muscled its way off my tongue.
We are building, dear: soon we'll have spare
rooms and a fireplace and a collection of shape-
less boxes and borrowed furniture. We will rifle
through our new space and hang photos and ration
the money we spend and the food we eat. Your body

is a room to me - you are a structure in my house, a body
of security and curiosity. The taste on my tongue
is bittersweet bliss as I patiently store my spare
change and count down the days until love takes shape
in elegant wood beams and plaster walls. Sometimes I rifle
through your things when you're gone and steal a ration

of your canned good memories. Can you ration
love, I wonder? Can you dole out a partial body
of affection piece by piece: lips-teeth-tip-of-the-tongue?
My affection for you does not waver. When time is spare
you still rest your head on my shoulder and hold the shape
of me against your frame as if I were an heirloom rifle

waiting to be cradled and fired. I never liked to rifle
through the past for very long. I was able to ration
my expectations and wait with you, plan with you. The body
of our experience rests softly in the crease of my tongue.
In the beginning, I could tell your limbs were lonely and spare
so I lifted you off the page like a detail or a shape

from my favorite painting. Love can re-shape
hearts with fast fury, leaving lovers unattended to rifle
with happiness - a commodity impossible to ration.
Eventually, we learned to find strength in the subjective body
of coincidence and the void that flickers at the back of the tongue.
The void houses my snakebite dreams and the spare

rib in the dirt. Bones and marrow and other spare
parts of some divine idea nestle there in the mud, a shape-
less attempt at a beginning. It's like the world's rifle
is cocked and loaded and love is the only thing left to ration
out salvation. You know how to calm my body
down like an antidote placed on the tongue.

Our story rolls off my tongue and anything I have to spare
is yours. I am determined to shape the world that rifles
through me - to ration out hope as if it were born of no body.