In the beginning friends
brought you to me, a gift,
this skinny thing

they wanted me to have. This quiet
breathing thing I could smell

the summer sweat on
but I was cold stone,

nothing, I wanted nothing from no one.

And you: heat and silence,
all smooth skin and sharp edges,

and damaged, both of us,
so exquisitely damaged.

The flesh of those days
was limitless.

Skin following skin
endlessly, unending only

because from the beginning
there would be an end.

It’s the sharpness
of your body, the ways its angles

trap shadow, that will core me
like an apple for months.

The edges of your bones,
their absence,

that is to become this obsession, this haunting.

Every gray sky and unlit room in this city
a stark contrast to shifting

sunlight in June, shadows blowing
across the room, and outside the dogwood

flowers floating down like disembodied butterflies,

floating, flying, flown.

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