jersey sheets cascaded off the
bed but we never felt the cold
beside you like the august sun
every touch a blaze of insight

foreign heat tiptoed through
your hands and into mine as our bodies
curled away from apprehension
and into the warmth of each other

every moment without your breath
a black hole opened in space till
my lips found yours and we were back
made of nothing but sensation

my stomach shuddered with jolts
of exquisite surprise as your quiet
fingertips brushed softly over
waves of untouched terrain

in the curve of your arms I found
a substitute for emptiness
a cure for quiet and lonely dreams
in the rise and fall of your chest

what we might have had if you stayed
now only the sheets drape my skin
as I shiver in your tracks and
wait for august to come again