The curve of you,
where the cheek meets the thigh,
is sweeter than lips strawberry
in a tinted photo
which is not your own anymore.
Instead savor
the place of skin wrapped by summer
clothes stretched as you run.
A prickle
of grass at the back of your neck
and sweat on your hairline,
delicate musk
in its stickiness trailing down,
down into the gentle creases
circling the mounds.
You create your own humidity.
Trap it here now,
to use it later or maybe
find it in memory
at that party where you sent the calling,
just sitting, testing,
like smoke in your favorite princess movies
and you were asked to dance.
The first time is power.
Twine them out, those summer tendrils,
use them only when you wish
although you heard once
people with synesthesia
see auras and they cannot be denied.
Try
to pull and retract
your affection on your whim,
keep it close against your chest or blow it
forward as you will,
that monumental surge of softness.
Sometimes fail.
Ensnaring, that’s a witch’s term
as green vines probe the earth,
and it need not apply to you.
What you do has no shame because
it’s echoed back, singing
on cornsilk and raven’s wing,
from when you exposed your throat.
We’re all slain from within, but
in spilling blood, we snatch another’s look.
There is no conquest,
only ebb and flow,
a frog wriggling in your palm
reeled in from the darkness.
