I am all knees and elbows
jacknifed on the bed,
foot over calf-
stomach to sheets.
You posture by the dresser,
secure in your engineered world
and slice my ears with repetitive boasts of passion.
Passion makes you nervous.
I have bent T-square for you,
measured every pillowcase stitch with panting breath.
My nails have etched paisly down your back
as your shifting hips
bonebruised the soft side of my thighs.
I once swore my ripeness would no longer fall into you,
Now I imbibe hot pride until my tonsils char.
When you come in a syncopated swagger,
pants undone and smelling of
sunshine,
I tear off pieces of me.
But while you're scrabbling above me,
I think only of our hands
gripped in numbing affection
aching to force a technicolor nexus
onto this blank mattress.
I want to tell you these things.
Plead Roget and his magic thesaurus
to give me the allegory
that will breathe jagged in your ear
as it slides one bare knee
up your thigh
making you suck air...
but I mouth around these cautions like prickly pear,
and I don't know how to clean my nails of your sloughings.
So as you slither up my leg like Eve's asp,
and dip into my melted glass thighs,
turn me over.
Listen to my discontent,
ear to navel-
and don't assume love,
not understanding the language of acid.
Desperation has consumed this place and left us parched,
so I am going to lie silent,
and kiss myself to sleep.