Wasteful. I don’t want to be wasteful. I’ll swing a steel bottle just between my thighs and relent to its weight. And as it returns, my knee is struck. The bottle left trembling, a loud and empty shrill. A cry of thirst, I must refill.

Inevitably a game of give and receive until he or I have taken too much.

The room is showered by sterile fluorescent light that nearly illuminates. It flickers in and out like tired indecisive eyes, unsure if to keep open or remain shut. Blemishes of recognizable origin mark the grid of square tiles beneath me. In the room there is a single toilet, its seat positioned upward as if expectant. The floor darkens around its base, yellowed film spilling out from underneath. Grime and filth are caught between the tiles.

The faucet is turned. The pipes moan. Reluctantly, it empties itself.

The nozzle vomits, sputtering until the spray surrounds me. A violent mess and a waste. It softens, though, the sharp white foam dulls into a pristine clarity, barely there. Eventually, a faint stream tumbles from the faucet and into his patient cavity–a.

The bottle hums but the song is drowned as emptiness pours out in place of another. I lift the bottle to my chin.

“I’m still hungry,” he interrupts. “I want more.”

“Would you like a sip?” I ask, more from contempt than courtesy. And so he slides his uncut, unclean fingers around the rim of my bottle.

InAndOutInAndOutAgainAndAgainPleaseStop.

“Do you like that, boy?” he asks.

“Of course.”

And so he went into the formless night to be shaped. And hopes to make love with whichever might make him finally pray because he saw God in a wrapped basket.

From cover, to cover, uncovered. 

The basket that lies somewhere there, stuck in its casket, a crater,

A cof in.

Its throne, enough to make his insides whisper.

And whimper 

and wonder, 

and then ask 

“Will you take me?”

Suddenly he is a boy all over, “Take me again?”

“I want you to take me. To lay waste to my body and claim all my endings and beginnings,” He’s begging now. 

“To see only nothing in the shade of the walls your father built. And when you look for him, instead you’ll find me just outside your screen door, beneath the pool and behind the stairs. Right where you left me. Always I will remain, wanting and waiting in that basket you tried to bury, filled with honey and wax.

“So sculpt me, and I will fill your hand as you shape me. I will be supple in your heat, I will be yours. In your absence I will have nothing to do but harden within your cast. And finally, when you leave my lips, still I’ll be left with the taste of honey. Again, will you take me?” he finishes.