Indigo’s Voice

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.