He lays prone on the smooth base,
         with left arm pulled back across his body.

Take this arm, he says,
         this hand.

This plaster cracked down the knucklebone.

It’s only symbol,
         symbolon,
                   that small thing which has been wrenched apart
                            we seek to put back together.
                                     Desperately.
Such disparity in our desperations.

If I were to compare this broken hand to yours
         if you signed my cast in blood,
                  or the wine I stole from the tabernacle,
                           would I be healed?

It is in this way we are asked to pretend

to take the body into our mouth
         but not to swallow;
                  to taste the blood and believe.

But I don’t believe.

This wine-dark liquid has no hand
         on the treacle and spit that filled my mouth after a fight

how it tasted like the snipped tin
         Chris dared me to eat off the floor of my grandfather’s shop.

Blood gathers these broken pieces, like sawdust
         spread on bile, and settles them
                  into the tender and cursory holes left behind.

It’s not that I don’t understand how
         different the sound is when the wound is ripped instead of cut;

or how the bruise turns
         from black to red when it breathes.

It’s that you fill this cup again
         and again from some glass carafe
                  and forget

that no one could ever believe in a blood that tastes so sweet.