gabrielle grace hogan

Anything to Help You Sleep

Bare with me—take it all off, 
the cardigan that bulges past 
your small, calculated wrists, 
the wires around your eyes.
I am Pavloved—
when you remove your glasses, 
my heart gone aglow in 
microwave light, my body
lit up like a racetrack.
Frame this moment for the nightstand.
Save the space between our teeth
& tongue, open as a mother’s arms. 
Make a memory of the cuspid’s 
geography from the bend of the neck 
to the flicker of the earlobe.
I create a dogma from only a paperclip
& your name said beneath the breath of morning. 
The small slither of the syllable,
thunked down on the sheets 
like a butcher’s fresh cut.
Blankets splayed open 
like a condom on a beach.
Dangling summers
rung through with heat-bells. 
Every hour a blue dancehall 
heaving like a chest.
The sudden bloom of your shirt 
off the stalk of your torso,
the candle of your waist
& the wick of your curls. 
The heat’s peeling citrus,
the summer bending away from this 
moment where I first make
a cup of you.