This is both how it ends and how it begins:
I gave you two paperback novels and you forgot
to read both of them, they sat on your nightstand
for three months like the ghosts of grandfathers. The cover
of one is neon yellow, all bright like the insides
of your mouth, and the cover of the other
is greens and whites with the face of a small bird
coming out from the center. You hate to read. I knew
you wouldn’t like either book, but I loved them,
so I gave them to you anyway, then watched them
pool together in dust the way sweat pooled across
my body, my body underneath yours, yours a small
lightning rod and mine ever-expanding, corkscrewing
out like a mountain range or like a bottle of wine.
The first day we met we ended up in your car, I sat
in the passenger seat and was terrified of your hand,
but still mine crept to it like a fish to sand sprinkled
across beach by a child. At first you were there
lodged away in my left breast, your body I felt
form a small knot there, and the knot grew, slowly,
and then suddenly, gone, like a confession. First
my hands were deep in your chest and yours were edged
around my hips, everything felt careful and wooden,
and then our hands sawed away and disposed of. There
was one fleeting goodbye and then there was an empty room,
my body once again alone and standing underneath a sky
large and empty and flat as your cool tongue.