Bryan Borland

SHARING CLOTHES

Wearing your body like confidence
Wearing your body like brotherhood
Wearing your body like fatherhood
Wearing your body like a priest’s collar
Wearing your body like a leather jacket
Wearing your body like prophecy

Wearing your body like stolen underwear

Wearing your body like the payoff of a wet dream
Wearing your body like the fantasy of first sex
Wearing your body like the sweat of last sex

Wearing your body like a skin graft
Wearing your body like a leash
Wearing your body like a handful of you
Wearing your body like your mouth on my shoulder
Wearing your body like my name bitten in half

Until I don’t know which of us is inside

Wearing your body like stained knees
Wearing your body like an expensive butt plug
Wearing your body like an heirloom wedding ring
Wearing your body like a diamond between my teeth

Wearing your body like I forgive you
Wearing your body like I’m sorry

Wearing your body like fuck them
Wearing your body like fuck you
Wearing your body like fuck me

Say it and wear our bodies like words

Wearing your body like love me
Wearing your body like love

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Bryan Borland is founding publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press, founding Editor of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay and Queer Poetry, and author of multiple books of poems, including, most recently, Brotherful, a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.