Life is more like chess than left to chance.
Those times we moved together,
hoping it would last, crawling from
a bedroom to the board.
You were made of satin
when I folded into you, now I smell
the laundry of our past, the rat
of mere diplomacy in talk,
sprinkled like a powder
over what was dirty vowels.
Your laugh becomes an accent
I barely understand.
Here we're bridging years,
and fond is nearly found,
a jog around the asphalt of the heart.
Yet we might be a couple
standing on the road
to middle-age, exposed for what we are,
tattered bits of meat,
moments in the ticking of the day.
Reduced from bouts of hush
to silence holding sway,
our distance more
or less like passing cars.
Across a sea of salt I voyage,
pelvis to the jaw, turn you
inside out just like a glove.
Parts of you litter the sheet.
Sifting through these ducts and tubes
something's lurking here,
a tender sense of goose bumps
on the heart- you don't feel a thing,
I perhaps an itch...