ECHO
When they look inside
your chest, the sonogram calls
your heart an orchid, each
petal pulpy and abnormally
palpitating. You and I
both imagined it would
behave this way, flowering
too big where it shouldn’t.
We have both pressed
our ears to conch
shells and clocked
your heart as it
gallops into another season,
another faulty
bloom. Perhaps it is just
a symptom of aging, to worry
like this, with every sense,
in every room of our bodies.
Perhaps it is
wrong of me to be so critical
of your heart—to want it
to speak more like mine.
Love Poem with a Lack of Conception
In our raunchy love
we ache for household—
welcome mat, shoes strewn
or orderly, a kitchen
made of granite and cutting
blocks. We finger fuck
cumulous clouds
and yearn for a home
and a mortgage and a child.
How many times have we tried
to become
pregnant
during a storm of our sameness?
When we bleed it betrays
us in every way a color can.
I take off your shoes.
I clean you. We lay down
in no home
in particular.
Kayleb Rae Candrilli is author of What Runs Over with YesYes Books. They serve as an assistant poetry editor for BOAAT Press and live in Philadelphia with their partner. You can read more here.