Samuel Minier:

Writing in the Dark

When the time is right I will come for you

and your blood.

Through lace curtains and velvet night

your scent glides, traipsing the miles

to my hole. A phantom-taste, heavy in

my throat – flaring nostrils, stoking breath. Pupils

dilate, crackle after thirty dry days without you.

Nails biting into dirt. I pull-crawl

along your trail, scrabble like a frightened

roach away from light, moan is if in

withdrawal or love. Rain-soaked eucalyptus,

heady moss – all the aromas of the forest

drown under your throbbing tide, carrying me

through your high upper window with nary a pause.

Bedroom syrupy in slumber, summer sweat

and stained cotton. Amid your thighs

an iris molts – veins web the sheets, beckon me

like fingers. Tongue tracing the cherry tributaries

to their rich headwaters. Now it is you

sleeping like death as lips brim with lifeblood.

I drink all night

and then retreat before dawn to my hole,

to dream and wait again for that first night each month

when the time is right and I come for you

and your blood.