My next partner will know that:

My gasp is church time –

How words strung together

Are elegy 

To this right here [touch eyes]

[touch temple]

[touch heart]

[touch belly]

[touch hips with your fingers turned into the creases of your pelvis]

[touch toes]

[touch lips]

Yes, in that order.

Then touch other places if you’d like. Wherever you feel elegy.

Did you do it?

You understand

it’s coming. 

The signs 

When my breath slows to slip through bowed lips

When I groan, sigh, chew skin, get quiet, squint deep

Can you feel when I’m on fire? 

Do you get

That I’m full of poetry?

Partner, I ask

You whisper words in my ear after

Moving poems into me:

yellow

licorice

eyeglass

press

– softer.