witchy

i.
it’s cold and the water has been cut again
cut away somewhere under the ground, to a trickle,
a wish wrung out of our lips as the tap twists to nothing but a
gasp

in the house it is cold enough to cut through

I keep dreaming of long black hair on a boy on the pillow
beside me as he dreams
I keep dreaming of sand-written spells, of a love-letter burned in
I wake up and my chest heaves blood into handfuls of paper napkins
I wake up and I am tangled into sweat and sighs and
but I climb into the shower and shut the glass door and sit down
and look up longingly at its long neck
I wake up and I lean into the mirror above the sink and I swear,
by all that is shape-shifting and pure,
the eyes reflecting are not mine

ii.
maybe you have TB, she says
or scarlet fever. wouldn’t that be romantic?

iii.
clavicle, I say, tracing his in my dream as he dreams. acromion, I say, moving my fingers,
cupping. coracoid process.

spine of the scapula. he stirs.
my hands come together under his sleeping floating ribs-
around bones, I pray spirits into being.