LGBTQ+ Poem: Momentum, by Trinity Catlin

After David Cronenberg

You once told me a story about debris—about the gunmetal in your heart
—the full-throttle top-down drive and the only girl you ever loved

steering the machine with her hands trapped between your thighs
as you prayed to some titanium god for octane, or surrender,

or for a crack of lightning to fracture your spine to tell you that
you are alive—riding on the wings of a vanishing dream—

you told me you were tattooed with rust, with cures—showed me
the chrome bones bolted into you—and as I stood on the corner

of Virgil and Burns with the sun now crumbled behind my back
—I heard the noise of your blood running through the engine—

the metal veins—the drumming—the burning turn scraping
the red paint while the seams in your body snapped one-by-one

as you confessed: this is what I’m made of.
All I could do was watch you crash—

watch the drumming of your naked heart through the broken glass
—smoke rising to the song of silent birds, my swollen eyes

assembling what was left of you.