the place I keep your hands

in the dream you drown in salt,
but i am the tide,
folding you back into the lungs of the sea.

there is a cathedral under the skin.
its bells ring when you speak my name,
but only inside the marrow,
only when i am standing still enough
to hear the architecture collapsing.

i keep your hands
in a drawer with the knives i never sharpen—
not because they are dangerous,
but because they remember
too much of the fruit they have split open.

you told me once that love is the art of holding
what will never belong to you,
and i thought of rain on a borrowed coat,
how it darkens without asking,
how it leaves behind a pattern of damp
that feels permanent until it isn’t.

now, when i open the drawer,
your fingers point to the door.
the knives point to my throat.
and the sea waits, patient,
as if it knows
it will get us both in the end.