i watch you, the short curves of your fingers,
the smile that lurks in the corner
of your mouth and is never quite born--
the way you turn a page,
the way your face is lit in the light.
i hear you-- i am listening for you--
the inhalation, the exhalation,
the slowing swell, i swear i can hear
from here the sturdy, firm thump
as well as i could if my ear was against
your spine, if my lips could graze your neck.
and i am imagining the smell--
your smell-- your body, your soft temperature,
baked bread or summer nights or thunderstorms.
my eyes catch on your knuckles,
the pigmentation on your palms like a secret--
closer to the heartstream, brighter, softer--
the hands that i could die inside of,
skin i could swim laps inside of,
the texture of your fingertips and ribs
and your mouth. oh fixation.
the taste of physicality, since the body
cannot lie: iron, chlorine, calcium, steel.
your mouth is a playground where i
hesitate to invade but
am always sore to evacuate.
your body heat has a permanence, a way
of attaching itself to my hands and my lips,
till detachment is a bruising inferno.
observation is my only action
until my heart bursts out of my mouth
in a rage of heat and rhythm and pulsation
and seeking you, finds you:
finds each corner of your body
and the curves of all your words and
each bending offer of a future.
where we crawl in together,
the places we adventure and discover,
are nights like no others: endless,
and star-studded with the cyclical expansion
and collapse of blood vessels.
we are chemicals and reactive, your fingertips
on my neck, my lips on your shoulders,
journeying between constellations of lust.
tonight we make a cocoon of cool sheets
and a warm blanket, blinds drawn and streetlights
pinching them back for gold-patterned walls,
so that tomorrow when we emerge
our discoveries and expansions can be quiet gains
and vouchsafed memories.