Evening Talks

People ask me about you. Sometimes I tell them, sometimes I tell them even when they haven't asked. I can see more clearly now that you are only a distant body clothed in charcoal, talking so deliberately into a phone. I see you on crumpled sheets, your smile the only smoothness. The colours of you...the almost-whites and the cream-browns....the teeth-marks on your shoulder. To taste your blood and your roots and all that runs through and under your skin. To know what your name means in every language. In you I am soft and sharp, questing and at complete acceptance, holding, letting fall, never holding back, affectionate and hungry...