NOVEMBER PASTORAL |
How we love: by taking another name into our mouths and swallowing it for safekeeping. By softening at a touch the way dusk dissolves the city, bodies unmooring, skin syrup-sweet. I read a poem in The New Yorker about wind turning grass into italics and watch rain dimple the puddles that flood the road. On days like this, you and I like to hike up the hill behind the clutter of apartments and lie in the grass. It grows high enough to keep us hidden, limbs muscled open like oak, shirtbacks soaked through. You reach for my hand— Remember how we used to touch like we feared electrocution? I watch a bird fly across the sky and wonder how we must look lying here huddled for warmth—one wave echoing another. And if you ever want to be a shipwreck, I’ll be the seabed on which you rest. I always knew I belonged in water. And, now, raindrops pearl my hand as I reach toward your cheek, rim your lips with mine, hunger ribboning my throat shut. How to describe the flavor of your mouth? Rain and Earl Grey. How to describe the grass swaying in the breeze, the scorch of your skin— bright in this light—the fossae above your collarbones collecting water. |