Love, Face, Skin

 

Love

 

My deer, I am your headlights, the pool to your reflection.

 

I am the forest of your trees, the wind which sussurates your branches, the sepia foliage at your naked feet.

 

Face

 

I hold that precious orb in tremulous hands: the golden fleece, grey pools, a flaring nostril, your cornered lips aflutter.

 

My tongue makes love to your penumbral smoothness.

 

Skin

 

Sheathed in translucence you are, draped in the parchment of your life, a venous palimpsest, the sanguine estuaries, throbbing pulse.

 

I lay my hands on this partition, I knock, you let me in.

 

Solitary

 

A solitary letter ending

the alphabet.

 

Uncertain memories:

Did any of this happen?

Did I?

Was she?

 

A figure in a dream,

face blanked,

exchanged.

 

Where I should be,

her smells.

Her tastes.

Her sad, lopsided smile.

 

And now my being

reduced

to words:

mangled in writing,

spoken to bits,

disrupted by dial tones.

 

Between us time itself.

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