two

you can taste the salt of a tear before it can
bloom down my cheek, you can hear the song of fingerseas
in my conchshell ears before our alpine love may
pop them, you can catch the whiff of secrets woven
into my hair before jasmine may sit in the tangles,
your eyes drape a burqa on my flesh even before night's
velvet may try- this we must call love. tonight when
you draw me into a world of the softest pinks
and dollops of creamed air and an earth who
trembles too for our touch, this universe we
cup into our palms will not have room for words-
they tell me you will not have to ask for what
has always been yours: this we must call soulmates,
sole lovers, a sole self. and as we lie here
contour-pressed, selfsame wondering
at selfsame moon, in sameskin, so I only know
where I end by where you begin, there is a soft

tear: of my mothers, of pasts leaking in, of a trickle
of a snagged fabric you have never tasted. (how have
I then?) there are wormwhisperings now in my bones,
collapsing in disarray, jaunty shapes that do not know
how to fit into your every nook and cranny. they clothe me
in fleshmeats who have never felt lips not tracing
lifelines but drawing them, who have never had
constellations read in their freckles. my thigh
is taught not to swim through yours but only trust
the murmurings of my other (how is not yours?),
my breasts lectured not to swell but to hide away
in shame: they cannot blush if the many me's tumbling
through the ages never could, joints once oiled now
creaking. you once laughed

me through the stories of yesterday, through worlds
where love was a strange word on the tongue, to
swish around the teeth and spit out again: a date
tasted for the first time. today we live in the land of dates.
we laughed at those prying sameselves
apart, and blessed our flesh: those worlds pulled
them back to earth then, but today we tell ourselves
to fly free-

(instead what hollow rivers run
between is me)