The first time I got drunk in your basement, I heaved,
all gasoline stomach & aluminum tendons. I read
that lovers were mechanics, fashioning one another
from steel. When you hooked me to your machines,
I thought we were just that. You calculated the ways
my flesh would recede for metal, told me this made me
better. Remember the chapel by the supermarket,
where you told me to stop praying to a god I couldn't
touch? You took my face in your frozen palms.
When we were together, you thought of your hands
and the girl outside the strip mall. Intimacy by proxy,
you called it. All I could imagine was a plane, really.
Long airstrips, turbulence when I pulled away. I learned
to think of woman as a rigid body, the kind that goes still
upon impact. When the space heater broke, you held me
for my warmth & I almost mistook it for affection. I was silly
then. I should have known you were a gambler. You fixed
the game. You hedged your bets. Called it economic love
when there was no anniversary ring. See, I did what I did best.
I listened to the garage and my hinges squeak at midnight
and said nothing. I let my body become an experiment –
mice farms, infection models. I loved you, so I shattered
our plates against the floral, plaster walls when I heard
about what you'd done. Eventually, I held warnings of life
you did not approve of. I lost an arm first, then an eye.
You stopped bringing me to church. You tampered
until I became defective. Broken enough to stay with you.