WE WILL NEVER BE AS LOVED AS BY THE FLIES ❋ Meghan Greeley

we will never be loved as by the flies
you and I, spread bone naked over
pillows. How they hover, the lovers
with their needle’s eye bellies
over limbs ripe for the feasting:
sweet-skinned/sweat-skinned
those obligatory tangles –
crying into nail beds that July
will tear us asunder

I am very loved, very coveted
by that dark and starving cloud buzzing
in wait by the window. Could you love me
like that, would you take me
and replace me with pockets full
of poison, would you carry me through the
taffy-thick air, join me in matrimony
with the blood of strangers
the Portuguese woman downstairs who wears
butter yellow, the man who makes chicken
would I feel you there in a raised
welt, a pink pock souvenir?

you say that love is not the same as eating
a good fill, not a gut of
hunger fit to be stuffed in daily
taxidermy. That is not love, no

and so I am sent packed lunch-ready
into the world, looking to be loved as by the flies
but preferably a love my size and made of stronger stuff
than my million lovers who drown in
water rings on tempered glass.

But this I know: should I find myself standing
empty-handed in the snow-bound stomach
of winter, alone with only a new moon
of frostbite on my jaw for cold company –
I will know that I can return to them
in summer, summer after summer
I will be loved by them.
I tell the frigid wind:
I am loved, I am wanted
I am.