The old men married girls.
There must have been something
in that bargain: innocence,
or better, erasure--clean cloth
for bootblack, perfume hung
light in heavy air. I extract you
like honeysuckle, sweet-edged
in bees and stomachache, the price
of rebirth, the lie: that I
could inhabit your clean
skin, that you could lick
me blank again, that you
could be the one who needs
and I the hummingbird: there
and gone again, my mouth
slick on your skin in shades
of peach and plum, your flesh
tart on my tongue. I'd close
your eyes; I do not care
to be refracted, all my pieces
scattered by your springtime
clarity. The old men had cellars,
locks and fists, power
absolute; I have only
silence, the authority of scars,
and I will not give you more
than I can give.
published in Windfall, Truman State University literary magazine (2003)
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