How We Touch From a Distance

Now eight years? Is that right?

That she discovered specific things about how your body wakes up.

And you borrowed rope from the station to tie her hands

Behind her back at the wrists.

Honestly, I don’t remember what you did to her,

How you touched her or where your mouth went.

Most clearly I see what you must have seen:

shoulders retracted, collar bone casting shadow

Over her rising chest, eyes sharp,

hips playfully protesting, rising hungry.

What you called luminous to look at.

Do you want to be perpetually close?

You seemed to ask for that in some

Young way years ago:

Once while tracing your fingers

Along her sinking spine

Leaning to kiss whales, clouds,

Like warm flickering lights

Once, after you had left –

Stolen a book about Morocco

Or somewhere else,

Left her with gonorrhea

Or was it chlamydia?

You expressed needing

More of her.

And you grasped at her

Without saying,

When you tattooed the likeness

Of her ink on your chest

Like she would vibe on you

Forever. Her glow in your chest.

How you whispered when you told her that

There’s no precision left in this story.

How you whisper to her now

About the glow in her chest,

About the multiverse,

About collision.

Althea Seloover, 2021