Each night, I sleep on rocks
that hum with forward motion, blaze
a molten path across whatever grows.
My pillow burns pochotes clean of spines,
consumes hibiscus petals as they fall, impassive,
waiting for my head the way a window

waits for sky. The way a window
draws its frame along the back of every rock
and waits for something to reach through, impassive,
sun-baked. I chew astringent roots that blaze
me empty. Desert air grows
thick and twists its ropes along my spine,

along the space I call a spine,
a shaft of light. There’s a short window
of spring when color grows
from every crevice in the rock,
the breast, when I blaze
orange as noon and you look on, impassive,

asking why. I answer in the passive
voice: a wall of spines
you might mistake for hair, a blaze
to cauterize a new incision. This is not a window
to the soul, this split and twine, this rock-
slide where leaves grow

dark as hearts. A sprout inside the fissure grew
into a whole invasive self and fed upon impassive
heat, the magma swell of rock,
my legs, my spine
and fingertips, the window
where you used to sit at dark, cigar ablaze,

and sketch my face in smoke, a charcoal blaze
on gray-washed canvas. Now my veins grow
roots into the lava flow, push windows
through the present tense, impassive
as the future rubs an itch against my spines.
I lodge there, splintered, until rock

remembers soil, until poppies blaze and rock
impassive seeds to sleep. Tomorrow’s window
stretches open, cracks its spine, begins to grow.