Your tongue used to sneak in my mouth
like the old days, girls climbing trees to sneak in an older boy's bedroom:
he had a single bed and plaid sheets she would think of
in the same way she thought of wrinkled bubblegum wrappers
but neither tried to taste good for the other. The
boy and the girl just were what they were, just hidden in each other.
My hands could be the bedposts, my hair the headboard,
my skin the blanket she will dig her fingers into, thinking what is home
what is home - somehow it has become a
tap on the window, a whispered I am here, hello.
You helped me to get over my fear of silence,
my chirophobia. When everything was meant to be quiet, when we have
nothing to say, you would pour honey down my throat
and hold hold hold me tight
so tight that it would seem everyone knew. I imagined turning on
the television, there would be an image of us lighting up Times Square:
you would calm the whole wide world. It took us years
to realize that we have the kind of love that is always, always okay.
The girl shimmies down the tree, an old oak
so tall she feels like she has dropped fifty stories before she finds grass,
she feels like she has lost fifty feet worth of body and flesh.
His window is open, her lips separate, it silent and
it is okay. She mouths, I miss you
then climbs up again almost desperately, completely dependent on her
legs to pump air into her lungs and breathe through the pores -
blackbirds see up vines up her skirt, and twigs
bruises like wide bushes and then his hands like a nest. What is home.
Your saliva grew like moss against my cheeks,
I once bit and bled in my sleep, had nightmares so I could hear something
but you gave my teeth a garden to pick vegetables from
and I stopped needing traffic to rock me
to bed: your tongue used to sneak in my mouth, now I have its words.
