I press my fingers into the purpled lees where dusk has pooled and gone nowhere beneath my skin and it is an orchard, I swear it is, tendered by kneeling, bruised by fists of a storm that came pelting down-in and did not ask if I would have it, and the blotches quicken, blossom? not quite, they darken and gather like ink tipped too far, like wine held too long in the mouth, like hellebore winter-kept for poison or prayer I cannot tell which, and I prod their petals, sideways divine, because the ache answers me back, because it buzzs, because it will not let me sleep and perhaps I do not want sleep, perhaps I want this slow flare, this sloe-slow stain blooming beautiful under my hands, and I ask, though I may already hold the answer, do I adore this perfume of hurt, the way it rises metallic and sacchrine, or do I only want to be resumed, taken up, handled again, by hands that know me, know me plain, hands that read the script written in violet hosannas along my pallid thighs where sorrow gilds what touch denies and turns need into something almost holy, almost legible, something that might coax even a blind devotion to pause and look, to linger, to love me because I am marked, because I am readable, and even as I test the seam where hurt and hunger knot themselves together and refuse to separate I taste the iron in the dream, hot under the tongue, and I know, I do know, no flowering grows from brine, not truly, not ever, and still I press, I press.