An ode to my lover's hands and his revolver

He dreams of revolvers. How they become
too hot to aim, pin-cock. How they melt
before he can release their dying. I cannot
see inside him. Don't know what lives there.
Most days I think I might. If I stare
hard enough into the beaded black.

His hands are always unfolded before me.
Always full of gifts. Coins, milk, rose petals,
keys, answers, books, wine, praise.
He fills his mouth with impossible delusions.
Says I am large. Of the heavens, stars.
Words like brilliant and unbreakable.

His hands deserve odes written to their
every brick and nimble doing. I want
to tell you he'd take down a building
for me with these hands, he'd empty
a man of his blood, empty a revolver,
but he'd hesitate in my telling because

you would think him a brute. And he's right,
isn't he? You'd think him cinder-block
and pit bull. You'd picture his youth,
boys every shade of brown and bullet.
You'd guess of a ramshackle home, wonder
of his parents, if any. You'd picture clay

dust streets. Or asphalt and sirens. You'd
say, where is Guyana on a map, anyway? Or
you'd mishear Ghana because Americans
always do, as I did once, and while you might
picture it beautiful, it won't be his beautiful
and he cannot help but scorn over the mistaking

so I don't tell you the story. I don't tell you
he still dreams of his dogs, and coconut meat.
Don't tell of his caterpillar letters or his prayers
over the seawall. I don't tell you how he moves
graceful in the dreams, his boxer trunk dancing,
eased as ballet or Michael and his feet, how

they drape from his calves – this part is real,
though he'll never show you – angle like pointe
shoes and he buries them in Timbs and shredded
hems on his jeans. He is six worlds in one man.
I will tell you he dreams it is me who provides
the revolver. Always. Recurring, he says.

My face turns to a barrel of stones but he calls it
freedom. Says the revolver frees him from captors
in the dreams, but I see a woman made of gun powder,
always ticking. Always seconds away from a struck
match. How I give him something to kill every day.
How he blesses his hands, after naming them, the Able.