A poem in which I love from afar The ghost of your jaw still burrows,All teethskin and scruffInto my neck, savoring the milky velvet Virgin cove behind my ear, an offering That tugs a hungry purr up from your gutAs one might pull a briny, netted crab out of the seaUp, 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 sunThrough the crowded bus’s window, As the heaviness of my hot shower, and asMy own hands, tracing the effigiesOf 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 handsAnd washed me in my own surrender.What a relief it was to disintegrate Loosely as a smiling corpse,Cradled by the flaming pireOf 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 indecentlyAs an August peony, a plumAnd realize fiercely that we are stillMaking love, just no longerSkin to skin.