Your mouth is usually dry,
I’m sure an incubus
sleeps in your gut.

You were, at first,
a twilight ride
on a stormy night,
unprecedented submission
I confronted in autumn

I place your tender brutality
in the very back
of my medicine cabinet.

Amongst the radio and drug deals,
I lost my will to speak
You saw my sure hands
do all of the talking

There is contact
and then none at all.

The spectators cry
Plot ! Affection ! ****** !
But I play a probe
and you embody a shell

There is crescendo in your throat,
a cloud of static air in mine.
It is the punctual friction
that provokes combustion
yet there is nothing
about your face or history
that compels me to
douse myself in gasoline.