“Self-Portrait as Adam’s Rib” and “Eschatology”

Self-Portrait as Adam’s Rib

Tell me, when I was extracted, did it feel like an annexation?
I know my history, and I know yours. My spine, a curved border

that hadith warns against bending straight, lest you no longer
recognize me. I would not recognize myself, curved around

your heart, as I once was, like the frame of a lyre. I tug
on your strings and a cacophony of unanswered prayers

echoes against the hollow of your chest. There, beneath me,
lay the first qibla every nation once turned to–your heart,

a muscle, cramping with the force of a thousand resuscitations.
All I know is that it sputters back to life every time, insistent

upon itself. All I know is that I was once there, curved
around your heart, and that I was never a cage

until I was made into one. Your heart, striking beneath
my siege, aiming for the cracks. Before we fell

I tugged at the bone, a lyre string taut as the bars
of a jail cell, to ease the confession out.

And what am I, after all this? A border, shifting,
closing. A body of my own, separate from yours

except for that little blip in time when we wandered
the same gardens, reaching for the same branches,

peeling the skin of the same fruits until we peeled
back our own, to read our palms better, only

to find a line drawn straight down the middle,
one our mapless fingers could not cross. All I know

is that I am made from your splintered rib, edge
slick as a knife left behind in a gaping wound

to quell the flow of blood. That I broke myself,
plunging into the softness of your lungs.

 

Eschatology