Drafting (Meghan)

Drafting

There’s the thin quilt and the comforter folded at the end of the bed,

this t-shirt that barely strikes these sharp hip bones, too threadbare now

to wear in pictures from the days before: this pink cotton, this white neck.

Your hands are no longer new, but they don’t remember yet.

My hands are no longer new, but they have not yet grown bold.

(I say that, but they know your skin.  And once they reached beyond

and came back holding me, a tiny, beating facsimile, but she looked

familiar all the same.  I asked, and you repeated my name,

the syllables like syrup on your tongue and I could taste the sweetness.)

I wrap you in the me that breathes, stitch you there with elastic floss,

toss you like a boomerang toward tomorrow’s homing bend.

This pillowcase smells like pheromones, like words we only speak in the dark,

like decaying night into early morning still wearing evening’s dress.

You cover me, and I feel your figure swimming into cavities uncharted,

these atria, these ventricles, these arteries and veins without a name.

This could be cartography.  Folded parchment.  Landmarks etched in ink.