Your Body is Not a Temple

I once had a lover tell me
"Your body is a temple."
He was wrong.
My legs are not pillars
my spine is not a stack of altars
or a series of benches waiting for piled up salvation.
My teeth are not stained glass windows
My body is not storage for the glorified relics of your partron saints
My body's caverns will not tolerate
the crowding of innocent voices.
I am not a house for continual coming and going.

He was wrong.
My body is not a temple.
My body is a religion.
My body is up for interpretation.
My body demands rituals
physical and otherwise.

My body demands that
patellas know the grooves of my name.
My body circulates parables
instead of blood.
Clotted meaning swings my heart harder than church bells.
My body is a collection of unstable elements.
My body is not a temple.