the reliquaries we stuff

he told me yesterday

i'm still marveling

he was, too, as a child

and as i was

rote, but from the heart

"i'm so sorry you went thr--"

he was mirroring my me

saying

"nipples!

breasts!

areolae!

mons pubis!"

and this is something Deaf people tend not to understand

but all my hearing friends do

just because you mention it doesn't mean it's a whole production

it doesn't require tissues or a fucking sad cake

or hours of hand-wringing or painstaking detail

sometimes it just has to be said and it is said to let it be

and it's still necessary to acknowledge, to hear, to consecrate

and sometimes (you can always tell when) someone has yet to be validated, stood up for, cried for

fiercely loved and torn into with a firebrand of "you are not to

atlas

this asshole event or your asshole faux pals"

but i laughed and acknowledged

"okay, you really wanna fuck me"

but

all this time

he's been on my side, ripping into men, telling me they connive

destroy

just for the male of it

and once held me ravaged with rampant tears just tight and sweet and soothing

"go ahead, cry some more"

and after wetly, thickly: "i never had this with joe

and i wish i had fun sex to remember

but half the time he'd start

hitting me

still inside me

for 'cheating' and 'not loving him'"

so

if a man knows and was, too

but refrains from saying so

and is on our side, women

then there is fight

down to the very last sliver

of flint