Helios/Hephaestus

You told me once
about the divinity that drips from your fingertips
like so many oozings of sap

slipping out from ages of wounded bark;
flesh divided and held open with nails,
keratin and dull, warm steel.

My mother believed
in predestination, in perfect births
and rebirths––god stuff

she holds in her bones, forged
from bowels of molten hydrogen
and a million ancient supernovas,

things I could never see. Living things
have platelets and white blood cells, things
much more solid than my fragile ribs, stuffed with diminutive hopes

but you cradled me and made me half-divine
or maybe just half-unconscious––under bridges, under torsos,
under the protective heat, throbbing

in your gently twisting spine.
Sex and bodies and hot, hot tongues;
that's god stuff too.