The first thing you
and I had in common was not having chicken pox scars.

If you are searching for where perpetual love is not
look at the last bed I will sleep in
where your father died
and moss built his corpse a second beard, wide as
a noose. Nature gave me two hands -

one for holding my head underwater, another for pulling
myself back up.
I can only replace those who are not dead.

The skin between my thighs
smells the way that yours used to, the scent I worshiped
like expensive perfume. I now realize it is
just sweat.

That is the second thing we had in common
after the 500 times I acted as someone you once loved.