Pang

What I wanted seems a grubby thing now, content with its little aches, its own filth and paws. Hungry still. Metal pang on tongue rooting blindly. Wanted.

Absent time called sleep, gaps that release, things we wrestle with and sleepy, grubby, the sheets leaving hieroglyphics, your small, cold feet having feet dreams, and me with my mouth full of envy. You murmur, the sound of slow slip, and you're already forgetting, my hands there and going, gone, callous and friction, but I'll take this, don't you see, outside the low branches, the cold cracking soil, your mouth in the dark air. The dissolve. Hand to mouth. Mouth.

Undulate

Some nights are sharper than others. Usually, though, truth as weak as the small house lights flickering across the water. It's easier if you shoulder your way through. Forget. The remains of the night, the night, the last night. Careful. I will try again once you're gone. Forget. She sublimates when he's not looking. One day she'll be pure light and then he'll see. We forget, and other lack necessities. Do what you have to. Regular eyes now seeing regular things after the irregular wants and mouths. Time leaves anyway, careless and full of shrugs. The arterial crisp trees remind. Soif sounds less harsh than thirst. A different part of the tongue entirely. The French sound lucky. Only the glass can tell the difference. Just as the swimmer knows the currents have needs, you can't take it personally. A night spent wondering where I'd go if I could carry myself. Forget.

lip

no one tells you, nostalgia needs time, and here we are starting all the forgetting,
the world wet, and I want
more time.

to remember the wide raft bed, langourous, husked and pulp on the lip of being

dust motes and punctuation resign careless, wandering, scattered,

alleys to hide in, awnings under the rain, memories hissing by in the fading

slant

Your mouth now, delicate under umbrellas, tentative to retreat you lean like the damaged, listing, attentive to the slant of the rain and the gap where my shirt opens, a place to remember my chest. It's been raining for years.

snow

Once, standing under white sails, a hush all around as truthful as snow. Desire to be shelter, to be warm around and 'round again. Quiet, so quiet I can hear your cold mouth on mine, hush now. Let me get you home.

List

Two or three things come after longing. A path I didn’t know before. The trees here throw off their leaves, stand naked, arterial. Truth is in the blood. Nothing you could solve by showing up. Lay down with false images, wake up with pillows wreckage on the floor, bottom lip cracked. Apathy of sky begets more sky. Itch of dry skin, dry as wood dust now, all your hands forgotten, well fled. A few more things. Things to list. Tomorrow.

The River

River at the bend, sluggish, crisps into glass. Here and there you stood brittle, the city reaching out to the water behind you. There are photos somewhere else, each moment clear as gasp, stood in the way of your mouth, the burning nuzzle. How small things, smaller than memory, come back like shrapnel. Make plans. The opposite of syncopation, something wrung from blankets and new contortions. It’s a thin want. But they’re waiting for it, spilt sweet.

arc and return

Your legs remain the same, mouth open more edges, things change and stay. Sinking felt between third and fourth ribs. Your hand on the chain of my swing. Later, pushed back on the mattress. You ring as sound, you shunt under sheet, air on sweat, gasps and puddle, your legs itch where they bit you, our mouths keeping busy, an imitation of before, lime leaves on the kitchen counter, wet with wringing, we run water, salt, rung breath, run amok, flung stone on stones, a question of bad timing and falling in the blanks. Details flood back. You look for your shorts, your shirt.

bare

we are delirious and we can taste it.