Climbing

My fingers grip your face like rock; I stick
digits into your open mouth
into nostrils ears eye sockets
to steady myself as I climb upward
to the top. Your hair, eyebrows
twine around my fingers: snarls of brush
and vines that twist around my hands, snag
my ascension, hold me next to stoney surface.

You would hold me here forever if you could,
allow birds to peck out my eyes and organs,
permit the sun to bake me into earth.

I repel down to your bottom lip, a slippery
protrusion of rock,
call into deep caverns;
the resounding echo signals emptiness,
assures me that the caves
are hollow vacuous cold
best left unexplored.