The Margins of You

The margins of you held the filthiest annotations I'd ever dreamt of making.

[incipit]

The main text behaved. In the gutter ran the true manual, lampblack wet
at the corners, a sly hand writing where librarians dare glance twice.

[gloss of the seam]

First rule of writing. Work the seal. Warm the wax with breath.
Lift the glue with a nail. Split the fruit along its sugared seam
with slow fingers, syrup bright on the cut. Slip two fingertips under
the silk drawstring and whisper the knot open. Peel by little
crescents. Skin sighs. Let the meat shine.

[scholia for the thumb]

Fingerprints are signatures. Press them into the margin until the page
shines dark. Smear the ink. Let the smudge read as hunger.
Let the paper be ruined in the wetness.

[college of verbs]

Unpin. Unlace. Unsnap. Bite the consonants until they soften.
Teach vowels to lengthen in a moan. Make a sentence beg without
ever asking.

[minor chapel]

There are candles in every sentence if you read close enough. They drip
along the line breaks when mouths work. Clink! Saints pawn
their halos for a taste of red sugar. A hymn is nothing but a tongue
that learned the night's language.

[marginal mechanics]

I underlined with tongue. I circled with my palm. I added
a caret where the page begged for insertion. I wrote longhand along
your hip, each stroke a little blasphemy that warmed as it dried.
The footnotes refused to behave and grew fat with confession.

[errata]

Strike the word pure wherever it hides. Replace with honey that runs.
Replace with a date crushed upon the sill. Replace with
linen that learned me by rumor and trial.

[diagram of openings]

Here a bracket parts like a thigh that trusts its reader. Here a colon
watches and does not blink. Here a tilde trembles above a vowel that
is trying to contain itself. All punctuation is an orifice if the hand
knows music.

[pagan appendix]

Cythera written small inside a garter. Paphos as a receipt for fruit.
Dionysus a smudge where the seam says drink here. Ariadne ties a ribbon
in the margin and every loop becomes a lesson for the starved.

[instrument list]

Two fingers for the seal. Three for the pliant flesh. Knuckle for emphasis.
Teeth for the thread that will not yield. Tongue for gloss. Throat for
music. Stomach for proof.

[ledger of wet]

The page swelled. Ink ran black again. I lapped what escaped.
I wrote until the nib squealed and the paper sweetened. I wrote until
the letters stood up and begged to be read again from the start.

[practical rubric]

When a paragraph claims virtue, spill more across it. When a sentence
goes obedient, cut and drag through the clause. When
the reader is polite, reward with a doorway written sideways and ring
its bell with your tongue.

[colophon]

I shut the covers, left the gutter ajar like a market at dusk. Vendors
called in letters that stain. I left fingerprints where no word
reaches. Your body kept the ink. My mouth kept the gospel. The final
note slanted bright as a match:

Begin at the seam. Write with fingers first.
Lick the excess. Annotate until morning.