Let's haunt each other like lighthouses 
in the winter-- read our mosquito-bite 
hieroglyphs by flash light 

what did you take with you
the last time we climbed the lighthouse?
i carried a chunky camera--
the type that reminds you that
you're a thief of faces-- a terrarium 
of a skyline-- and it we me
who said that the whole island looks
like muscles and bruises 
from the top--
lean me over a railing again
and tell me love is the 
space between you and the ground-- 
it was only you and me and the
sun who paints bodies in the 
empty corridors of August
and we said that surely someone
must live in the lighthouse 
all summer to keep the fire
in the top from burning down the sky--
we slept on the stair case--
laughed at the funny faces of the
moon trying to wrap the night
around her like a blanket--
laying there you read my mosquito 
bites like braille-- said that
the insects were drinking
blood for the sake of poetry--
plucked the couplets from my back
and said we made a language 
from all the places we lost blood--
and i told you that your bites
were more like hieroglyphs--
i knew they were a language just
out of reach like a body
in August-- 
how far up did you think
we would climb? there's not enough
stairs to escape a summer
and i always knew i would wake 
up some morning with the light
quiet and downstairs 
seeping with cold-- 
i re-lit the fire in the brain
of the lighthouse in the
vague hope that it would warm
us back into the haphazard knees
of June--
but the front door was
open and so were the bug
bites
on the backs of my thighs--
i wrote down their alphabet to
try to figure out if the insects
knew where you had gone away to--
at light when the moon
swallow gulps of heavy October,
and November and December 
and January-- sweet bruised
clementine the season had
become--
i still slept on the staircase
so you'd trip on me when you came home
and tried to look
at the fire without me--
when a storm comes i pretend 
it's thunder
and i see you when the island 
stretches the sinews in her shoulders
when she wakes up too early in 
March--
i measure the distance from the top 
to the ground in the hoping that
the mosquitoes will come back 
with another prophesy to 
embroider into the space
at the base of my neck--
i want to know how i let myself
become so haunt by a lighthouse
and what is even left of you 
here-- i burn the tips of my
hair in the beacon as a sort 
of offering
but even when summer comes 
back the bodies only remind me
of everything you said about 
the blood of a poet--
i wonder if you still
laugh at the moon when she
tries to cover herself--
i wonder if you see my bruises 
in patches of a oyster clusters--
i wonder if you count
the beacon as a star-- 
what is left of the words the
mosquitoes left for you on
thighs?