Gloss

In this photograph I have of you
you're licking your finger, preparing
to turn the page of a magazine.

Except all of those glossy sheets are
outside of the frame, so
the whole thing becomes
an immortal monument, a
spotlight on a moment I
was thinking the dirtiest
things about you.

You were wearing that sleeveless dress,
darling,
what were you trying to do to me?

Making me vibrate inside
of my skin inside of
spacetime so I had to
go into the kitchen
and make myself a drink
just to slow the evening down.

I know that,when I remember
you, I will remember
your lips
and your fingers.

I will remember the way
the spades of your fingernails
would rake over the ghostly,chalk
fields of my skin. But mostly,
I will remember how
you would fall asleep,so suddenly,
and I would be left talking to myself
for five,
ten,
minutes without evening realizing.

Wow

To say,
"please,
not-God,
but the thing we pray to
anyway, never let us stop
being gentle.

To say, never
make it our turn
to become the monsters
we left on the other side
of the river.

With kissed-on lips,
to say, "oh
how strange this is"

how strange to watch
someone new turn into music
under record needle fingers, to have
the limits of this world slid off
of your back like the straps
of a dress,

to have hands
so suddenly
full

oh
how strange it is

to say,
"wow"

because
really living
and really dying
both just feel like exhaling forever