Man with Hands and Ankles Bound

Past midnight you're peeking

Your neighbor's open window shades

Saw a man crouched on the hardwood

On his knees and elbows splayed

Like an offering, an altar call reordering

The story of our origin, some primal thing

An elemental shame

There's a light on in the darkness to an unfurnished apartment

And a mattress on the ground

There's a woman standing upright like some archangel alighting

In the nighttime and before her

There's a man with hands and ankles bound

And we don't need the sound to know the plot of the film

Angles switching in between her and him

Captions bracketed the language of skin

Cut to a room past midnight

Frame the camera on two lovers' conversation

Where they promised to be open and be honest with themselves

About their bodies' inclinations and the systems that replace

The very fiber of their beings with a shame they're made to feel

They've always felt

And there's quiet on the set

Except the ceiling fan there turning

Throwing sound in all directions

There's a process of unlearning

There's a tension when he says

"Sometimes I think of you with strangers

When I lie awake at night afraid in bed

With or without me to watch or to stand at the edge

Where your back is a bridge and the distance it spans

Goes from me to some man

Goes out from an old familiar country

To some uncharted land"

And you're peeking through the curtain

To a naked man deserted and a mattress on the ground

To apartments still unfurnished and indulgences unburdened

There's a figure disappearing with a briefcase through the front door

In the crowd

Man with hands and ankles bound

Man with hands and ankles bound

Man with hands and ankles bound

Man with hands and ankles bound

And we follow her out of the house

Then pull it back, widen the shot

Lose her inside of the crowd

Then go black

But leave the sound in to carry it out

The last act

Credits roll past the crowd and now

Bring the houselights back