Your Heart is an Empty Church
                                           Sarah Escue




Couched on ripped pews, we inhale
sticky-sweet smoke—electric citrus,
summer thunder, liquid cinnamon.

Your name dissolves
on my tongue—a velvet fig.
I bathe you

in the baptistery,
dip your feet in cedarwood oil.
On the rooftop, we share the last

bottle of wine. Ripe lips stain
naked thighs. We sway
like lit thuribles.

The clang of vesper bells echoes,
stretches like a shadow on the street,
ricochets off perse clouds.

Do you see the stars?
Swelling and popping
like bloated balloons?

They fall and fizz,
seep through my fingers
onto your bare chest.