i

I crawl through the atlas. Its pages
redundant, its mysteries solved
in electrons, still I discover there
that I am the lion’s twitching tail
I am the noir witch
I am the soft breeze that flickers against
your lips, strikes like a match.

ii

I read the words of the dead, the ones
they wrote before, in the days
when they mapped the shapes of their world,
its mountains and coasts. The shape
of their lover’s mouth. The one
whose tangled sheets they abandoned
for you.

I read the secrets of the dead, the ones
they wrote after they learned
the very secret secret of we all want to know:

Infernos. Balm. The way to cross from ocean
to ocean. Purgatory. Paradise.

iii

I am ferocious, it’s true.
It’s how I make space in the deserts for you.
The forests now all sky.

iv

It is not a dreamscape, it’s blight.
A whole continent’s fur marked by mange
and biting insects hunting blood.

The deep sea marks of present dragons.
The compass rose. The horizon cursing
my one eye through the sextant’s lens.
The horizon and the mockery of stars: this
is celestial navigation. This keeps me
on course. En route to you.

v

The light filters through
the translucent overlays,
crackling pages I turn over known
cartography, layer on layer
building the tale of their discovery,
exploration, conquery, their gloating rule,
their decline and fall.

Thin pages landing like autumn leaves
history layering the ground
for the world’s winter.

This is how I fall hard, so hard
for your burning world.