So Many Promises

I promise to sleep on my left side

to balance out the dimple

a violin left just below a nipple,

and I promise to salt the sun

reflected in the chafing dish

my mother set out just when

I thought I was done dreaming.

I promise, I swear, to make my way

home through the storm without

harming any animals along the way

except those I must step on to cross

the dark waters that circle my words

like a moat of burning flesh.

I promise, and this time you must believe me,

that although all my life I’ve never

fulfilled any of my promises, I’ll soon visit

the narrowest place inside me where blood

whistles as it endlessly loops

through the body’s own astrolabe.

From there, I’ll call out your name, I promise,

when I reach the sweat-drenched entrance

some refer to as the gates of Rome,

and I promise that I’ll pass through

and enter the city whose stepmother is a wolf,

two infants swaying like pendants

from her jaw.

And I promise you this,

when all the promising is over, there will be

more promises, uncovered from a locked box

for which the key has been smelted into

a ring so that my promises will always be

turning in circles, along with promises

passed down to me, and one day we’ll sit together

on some distant shore and hold hands,

and we will break, and we will break.