I called for you, spoke your name
thought you might want to play
a summer fling, a cheeky thing
that had crossed me, inappropriately
some years ago when I came
with another, and in passing
you’d thrown a polite
“G’day. Are you enjoying your stay?”
your voice pushing me down
to a place of imagination, or
perhaps premonition –
the witchy kind, inherent
a certain knowing, as clear as a bell
we would find each other,
some other time, in some other life
when I had course-corrected
my way back to this place
your kisses on my face, my skin
I take you all in, and cry out to a god
I don’t believe in.
There’s a certain shade
of teenage love
unlike any other
that time has to offer.
A passing flush
parades across the chest;
a formidable force
under the breast.
Heaving; heavy with
the weight of the First,
a confident uncertainty
of its own making
Sinking or Floating or Breaking
it becomes made.
A breathless vision;
here, well-hidden
in a canvas marred with age –
where vibrancy inevitably
has dried up like old paint
and succumbed slowly, under
silent fade.
Picture the seasoned lover
until the Last,
now warms with a pallet
of a predictable ensemble;
where a once-familiar hue
emerges as new.
Ah, the First –
a memory described
head-first deep-dive
into complete saturation,
summoned only in the tense
where once conquered all makings
now, washed from existence.
Lover
your whispered words
of a time before,
still carry
feather-light fingertips
across the skin
warm-spreading
and a tightening
breath, caught fast
in my chest –
I remember.