The Brain

The Brain

is the perfect machine, my friend relayed. 

When I think back to childhood

and its organs, love is always trembling, or I am. 

Filled with dreams of an angel just as it moves too far 

to know its hand is a hand. The loss of focus

has cost you the truth.

The brain shoots up: rigorous

and bloody.  An overheating, a haunting, 

a burial ground in steam and light,

spreading thin, lives caught like a breath

in movement. Trade-offs like eyesight, or love,

not too different from looking at the sun 

and being born. The light reminds me

of the limits of what can be touched—

the neck, the throat, the voice 

and how its loud gets stuck in your own throat. 

If I become the angel,

will you promise me this is a hand? 

If the brain is the perfect machine, 

does it glitch? Does it give out? Does it wait for command?

To wonder if love functions

like banned book lists, 

with their art of chipped termination. 

If the brain is the perfect machine, 

I cannot tell you where mine betrays itself—

mistakes the sun on your hand

for heaven.