I picked the lint off your shirt as
your head, deep in my lap, lay
with breath boozy and pores permeating

the smells of my childhood.
I yearned for that cryptic mix of
sud and ash-will you carry

with you those old humiliations and
fire-start new years of insecurity, absence
and tired, overworked clothing? Will you

love me so tight that my mother’s bones will
ache with the promise of release? Tonight
we’ll sleep, and I’ll ignore the nausea in my

gut and the fizzle and crackle in my brain and
convince myself for this one flicker in time to
inhabit the moment and wish, just wish, that my

feet could forever be touching your feet-and in
the morning, when you move your thigh from
between mine, we’ll notice that we’ve been sweating.