The Way You Look at Me

You look at me
like I have been placed on a silver plate,
still warm from the kitchen of some strange moon,
garnished with stars
and something you cannot name.

Your eyes undress the room.

They find me beneath my skin
and linger there,
hungry, patient,
the way a knife considers an apple
before remembering it has a purpose.

I know you love me.

I know because your hands
have learned the geography of my loneliness,
because you say my name
as though it were a prayer
you are afraid to finish.

But that look...

God, that look.

It makes me wonder
if love is only hunger
wearing a beautiful face.

Sometimes I feel myself becoming dinner:
my heartbeat a little bell
on the edge of the table,
my ribs a white porcelain cage,
my mouth full of words
you might mistake for salt.

And you stare.

Not cruelly.

That is what frightens me.

You stare as though eating me
would be the gentlest thing
you could possibly do.

As though you could swallow my sadness
and call it devotion.

As though somewhere inside you
there is a dark, endless room
where everything you love
eventually becomes food.

I love you.

I do.

But when you look at me like that,
I feel the moon lock its doors.

I hear the silverware trembling.

And for one terrible, beautiful second,
I cannot tell
whether I want to run from you

or climb willingly
onto the plate.