It was supposed to be about bodies.
You remember that much more after
and even though we're still enjoined,
sharing the damp night air of your room
and so cocooned in human heat,
it would be easy to melt into nothing else.
Then I'd be immune to consequence,
I'd be immune from foreshadowing.
But part of us has already parted.
It's only natural we return to ourselves.
Your eyes have already flashed,
I've already surrendered to its dark glimmer,
your cries pierced the night as I have you,
it felt like a trespass to see you so vulnerable.
It was supposed to be about bodies.
But if whatever is left of me,
some ephemeral burst glowing,
part of something that may be the soul
joins you without a question or choice.
It's something much more between us.
Maybe it would be wrong
to see things I never noticed before,
how even though I was supposed to go back
through the city's dreamlike neon streets
to a dark apartment full of ghosts
Where my only secret would be that
I'd fold the blankets until I could curl up
to an imitation of your warm body,
it would never be enough,
it wouldn't even come close.
It was supposed to be about bodies.
But now I'm breathing in our afterglow,
almost scared of how perfectly we're spooned,
like a second skin that finally found its way home.
Maybe it would be wrong to say
it's like we've known each other for so long,
to retroactively claim someone else and chart
all they are as some mystical terrain
that has never once been tuned to
any other force or hunger but my own.
Maybe it would be better to say nothing,
to let these quiet intimacies pass between us,
to carry all of this in my heart after
and never be a bother to yours because
if your hand pressed there and stayed
and began to note the pattern drumming there.
You'd feel where it's always hurt.
I'd feel the lifelines in your soft palm,
identical maps meeting and reminding me
of how vulnerable I really am.
It was supposed to be about bodies.
You remember much more now after
the deep and fierce heat bursting
that left us both breathless and shuddering
and I just want us to stay wrapped together.
Your eyes have already eclipsed into sleep,
into that sweet ether where more
than a body has been so pierced,
it feels like a trespass to see you so vulnerable
Whatever is left of me has joined you.
A part of us has already parted.
A part of us will always return here
without choice or question.