Emerald Circle

I wore the old desire like a second skin
A borrowed fire that I kept living in
Every mirror gave me someone to become
Every hunger beat its little kingdom drum

Perfume and memory, venom and lace
Ghost after ghost with your shadowed face
I called it love when it only curled
Round the locked gate of a smaller world

I fed on fragments, on heat, on signs
On bruised-up kisses and broken designs
I drank from the wells that never stayed clear
I knelt to the shape of my favorite fear

And all that glittered began to rot
All that possessed me possessed me not
Till something deeper than want or pain
Began to rise through my blood like rain

Open the sky inside of me
Break what I was to set me free
Beyond the wound
Beyond the will
Beyond the names I answer still

Take this heart past the edges of form
Hold me whole in the center of the storm

I climbed through memory, bone by bone
Through every inheritance called my own
The father-voice, the inward chain
The ancient pattern beneath the name

I turned to face what I could not keep
The root that twisted below the deep
And there you were—not dream, not sign—
But the living vast with its coils in mine

Not the sweeter lie
Not the lesser flame
Not the wound I learned
To worship by name

You were the field
You were the sea
You were the silence
Unfastening me

Open the sky inside of me
Break what I was to set me free
Beyond the wound
Beyond the will
Beyond the names I answer still

Take this heart past the edges of form
Hold me whole in the center of the storm

Crown of the dark that births the dawn
Take all I am and carry it on
No more the shard
No more the role
No more the hunger that called me whole

I am the cry and the answering flame
I am the wound and the nameless name
Come through me now

And after the breaking, a deeper desire
Not less of the body
But more of the fire