How We Touch From a Distance
Now six 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 arm
And then your back
And 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 adoration
About the multiverse
About collision.
Althea Seloover, 2020