your fingers carve canyons in my spine
digging to the deepest reaches of me,
and i am exposed.

you are pulling me close enough to you that
it is a surprise that we do not melt together;
your skin becomes mine; mine, yours.
we are one and the same.

you are changing my geography;
i am shaking, an earthquake.
you have broken open my fault-lines.

i have been told that bites, craters,
are lovenotes on the skin.
what, then, are these,
these canyons that trail my back?

you have left scars on me:
not scars that wound,
scars that change.