Poem Beginning with You and Ending with Everything
You give me the last raspberry
from your garden, a tiny burst
of sweetness that fits on the pad
of my pinky finger. You offer me
the softest parts of your body to sink
my teeth into when I’m overcome
with wanting. You call my pharmacy
and get my meds refilled when I’m too
despondent to dial the phone.
I come over and wash the stack
of cups and bowls that have
accumulated into a small mountain
on your bedside table. I give you
my blood in a heart shaped vial
to wear around your neck. You study
how I make my coffee, how I like
to be touched, curtail your urge
to devour, unthinking, and learn
instead to coax pleasure from my
strange and particular body. We no
longer speak, but when I fall ill,
I still make tea the way you taught me:
ginger and honey with a clove of garlic
and a dash of hot sauce to clear
the sinuses. We no longer speak,
but I’m made up of a million
gestures, touches, turns of phrase
that I learned from you, every you
I’ve ever loved, whose sweaters
I’ve wept and wiped my nose on,
whose art I’ve hung on my walls
and letters I keep in a box beneath
my altar, whose loved shaped me
into myself. I still don’t know how
to let love lay me bare beneath
its probing gaze without apologizing
for my body’s failures: when I bleed
through my pants and underwear
and stain the couch with a puddle
of blood as dark as rain-soaked
asphalt, you scrub the cushions clean
before I can say a word, knowing
I’d never ask. When I’m so
constipated I can barely move
without groaning out my agonies
like a creaky, rust-coated pipe,
you make me soup with sweet potato
and lentils to soften my stools. So this
is it, I marvel every time I am undone
by another disgusting display
of devotion. This is what love asks
of me: to accept every gesture of care
no matter how humiliating it feels,
to let myself be witnessed in all
my unkempt, abject, leaky, embarrassing
glory. I try to be precise and contained,
to fit myself into brief, neat stanzas,
but love makes me unwieldy, long-
winded. Love writes lines that spill
over the page. Love doesn’t care
about show-don’t-tell or the flimsiness
of adverbs; it wants me to tell anyone
who will listen how dazzlingly,
frustratingly, terrifyingly, mundanely,
devastatingly, blessedly, earth-shatteringly,
ass-shakingly, world-makingly it fills
me. I used to think I needed
to sand my prickly edges smooth,
to temper my too-muchness and restrain
my terrible need, but every day, love
takes my face in its hands and asks,
Who are you without performance?
while I stare back as blank
as a Word doc the night before
a deadline. I wish I could cast off
this straitjacket of my own making.
I wish I could say what I mean
without cloaking myself in metaphor.
I wish I could stand before you
and let my body be nothing
but a body, no pretense
or artifice, a night sky
unblemished by stars. Love,
by which I mean God, by which
I mean the universe, by which I mean
you, let me be as unabashed
as the single long, coarse hair
curling up from your toe knuckle.
Let me revel in the excess, ecstasy,
echo, expanse, romance, fervor,
horror, pleasure, prayer, play,
swell, spill, shine, divine, thrill,
heat, wet, want, mess, miraculous,
nameless, vivid, agonizing everything.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor based in Seattle. Their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in November 2025. Find them at allysonang.com or @TheOceanIsGay.