Transfigurations (a love poem)

To first loves.

— —

A dove has replaced my
steady-beating heart with
a flutter, a flurrying,
a heightened sense of
falling, a plunging down
into secret caverns.

I imagine my belly
swollen big with
fish roe, never still
never quiet — a constant
eddying and spilling over
into tidewater.

Carving out all my shame-
filled parts, sowing instead
bamboo shoots —
each stem a cleanly
severed wound, each leaf a
careful promise.

A roving around fluid
bodies, too close and not
near enough. a cove.