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Like
fingerprint and DNA,
yours
alone.
And
can, in fact, indict you
or
acquit you in a court of law
if
experts speak.
But
mostly it’s to those you love
that
fine distinction matters,
living
breath through living cords
sounding like no other.
And
yours I’d know—
stream
of warm molasses
into a
copper bowl—
through haze of deepest sleep,
through labor pains,
and
even in a coma
if you
said my name,
I know
I’d twitch.
I’d
blink.
For no
one says my name like you.
So if
you go before me,
and I
arrive directionless as usual,
call
out my name
across
the moors of heaven,
and
I’ll know it
and
I’ll find you
to
nestle again my ear
against the hollow
of
your throat.
We choose our music wisely.
None that asks for arabesque
or pirouettes, our balance gone,
and none that sucks us
jitter-bugging, rock-n-rolling
into heat that melts resolve,
sends promise up in smoke,
cinder-kicks intention.
Dancing here in view, we force
a simple toe-heel sway along
the dizzying edge designed
to guide us true–as though the flames
that flush our cheeks and lick our thighs
on this thin cusp were not enough;
we hear the beat, we strike the pose,
we follow through.
So only look into my eyes
a moment’s glance, just dance
with metered pace this promenade,
this grand charade
of grace.
And then one day she found she missed
the old enchantment. Oh, being swept away
was nice enough—the jewels, his gathering arms,
the carriage ride, the sheer surprise (imagine!).
She adored the wedding and his doting charm,
but eventually she found the prince’s skin
too warm to the touch, too smooth, that he
lacked the intriguing bumps, their patterns
beneath her fingertips like messages of devotion
in Braille, that his lidded eyes merely blinked
in their bony hollows instead of watching her
from top-most ridge, beneath delicate shades
lowering and rising in time to her breathing,
that his legs though long seemed lacking
in a certain strength and grace as he stroked
his father’s lake, his fluttering kicks annoying
the fish. A leap was beyond him and diving
to the depths to retrieve for her…well, that
would never happen. And she came to dislike
the sound of his voice, its raspy tweedle, devoid
of the full-throated pitch that rattled the river reeds
and claimed nocturnal rule. But mostly she found that
at night upon her satin pillow when his fleshy lips
found hers, she closed her eyes and thought
of the slick-rimmed mouth, the cool scent of the pond,
the irresistible tickle of a fly-snatcher’s tongue.
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