Walking through the market,
fishtails hanging sluttishly over the edge,
scales glinting
the smell is vaguely familiar,
          I try to place it.

You wink across the crowd of people
as you weigh a bag of squid, your hands dripping dank water
and my cheeks redden--
I’m shy as the memories of my striped underwear on your stained carpet
and your mouth on my ******* rise unbidden.

You are nameless, but now at least,
I recognize the smell.

I wish I could describe to you the dense silence when the snow had melted,
and you had left.

It was almost as loud as when you were still
here, but in a way that sharpened
the cruelty behind it.

When I walk through the river of people in the city
and I reach for your hand,
and it isn’t there,
I wonder, abstractly,
if I will ever melt into the flow of people--

until my beating heart sounds no different
than those around me, and it stops squeezing
and stuttering, inconstancies
which serve only to remind me
of you.

I dreamt you visited me--
showed up on my doorstep,
hands in pockets

There were birds chirping
                       and the sky was mute

I showed you around and
didn’t hold your hand-

the bluffs,
the chapel,  the abandoned house,
       a heap of doors inside,
by the sagging staircase.

I woke up
before I could answer your question.

hand cupping my thigh
tongue against swollen lips as I kiss you,

your fingers thread through my hair,
tying us closer

an unlit candle on the
bedside table-the lamp
next to it, bulbous in shape, has no shade,
light from the bulb--
blinding until I focus my eyes over
your other shoulder

I still see him when we kiss-
when we touch, when you
tell those jokes,
unaware I like them because of the way his
mouth tilted upwards at the edges
when he told them

blankets a tangled mess,
bare legs swaddled in the sheets,
my ******* lay open,
exposed

you stroke a ******, the other; they rise to your touch

our bodies press, there is nothing
between us,
but there is no space to
breathe

after the heat began to swell,
we’d never leave our bed

open windows, curtains yawning-the incoming breeze rose
goose-pimples on polka-dotted freckles

lying shirtless next to me,
our contours matched but gaped wide
because of the heat,
faded jeans cuffed
just above his ankles

the blinds flutter-a momentary brightening
flitting over the sheets, rumpled, creased
and tangled around bare limbs

His breathing deepened, and I fought heavy eyelids,
but after watching ants weave drunkenly
up and down the windowsill,
my eyelids won and

I slept.