A poem in which I love from afar
The ghost of your jaw still burrows,
All teethskin and scruff
Into my neck, savoring the milky velvet
Virgin cove behind my ear, an offering
That tugs a hungry purr up from your gut
As one might pull a briny, netted crab out of the sea
Up, up from the depths
To splay luridly upon the rotting pier, gulping down
The last of that insidious left-handed snack
I used for bait.
Your breath arches my back-
Or should I say, the memory of your breath.
It teases me with messengers,
Coming disguised as the kiss of the sun
Through the crowded bus’s window,
As the heaviness of my hot shower, and as
My own hands, tracing the effigies
Of love you sculpted into that bit of earth
That makes up my collarbone, seeking to stir
Up some electric dust that settled there, humming
When you pulled magic from my skin with fretted hands
And washed me in my own surrender.
What a relief it was to disintegrate
Loosely as a smiling corpse,
Cradled by the flaming pire
Of the branches of your arms;
I did not suck my stomach in.
I sit in busses and in showers
In ecstasy’s echo,
Letting my head lol back indecently
As an August peony, a plum
And realize fiercely that we are still
Making love, just no longer
Skin to skin.
