The sweet and salt of another,
although already evaporated from bare skin,
still remains a ghost of DNA between us,
and I wonder if you can still feel it.
Some difference between the fires,
if you still burn where lips explored before
or if you still tremble where mine were imprinted
in the kind of unforgiving blaze you’ve craved.
Maybe it’s different for me.
Where everything was once so invasive
because it had a name and a promise begins
to untie you like an aching silent knot
finally learning how to cry out from the core.
But I still heard the plea,
your body told the story.
“Stay inside of me.”
I can’t touch such premonitions
and remain the same.
I didn’t sense this that night.
You returned in those late intimate hours,
almost intangible at first like fingertips
breaking through the mist of a fevered dream
to touch my cheek only to soon say goodbye
and I would normally cling to this pang
because it’s easier than forgiving,
easier than trying to understand.
Your eyes are glazed with a sheen of impulsive glee,
some carnal mystery I don’t know the shape of,
awakening me with rough open-mouthed kisses,
the taste and scent of others still flooding you.
Your dress will flutter and fall to the floor,
soundless as the ghost between us
and I wonder if I’m just living in the dark now,
if you bear marks I can’t ever touch,
unforgiving messages jealously encoded,
marks too invasive to be a part of.
I didn’t sense this yet.
I only knew the esoteric rhythm,
the pulsing echolocation pulling me home
but I swore that I was already there
because even if we still move along
as separate creatures, unique entities,
we’re joined in ways that once scared me.
Our blood surging in dark oceans,
still nestled within you,
coated in nectar still flowing,
an unstoppable warm river,
legs bowed around my waist,
a lock made of flesh and bone.
I don’t know how to belong elsewhere.
You whispered something unintelligible
and by then I was too enraptured
with being cradled against a heartbeat
and every frantic thunderclap signalled
far too much to take in all at once.
Maybe it’s different for me because
this once had a different name
when your whisper isn’t even a voice,
it’s a promise that you made into a knot
screaming from the core to be untied,
to be touched and understood.
It’s the deepest calling we’ve ever known.
I can’t be the same after
your body told the story.
“Please stay inside of me.”
