and then

 

I want
to taste your skin, there,
where the arm bends, cups
life

I want to find
the rhythm of night
breathing,

to know you by
sunny afternoons and
early mornings

I have learned to love
beauty, to worship
the body, the sweat-scent,
the kind,
fallible curve
of a naked spine

to straighten out the barbed wire coil
of insecurity, to love you