Inside Her

This morning

After watching her sleep,

I’m going to treasure her secret life

Like some breakable thing,

Saying nothing of the careless peace

In her face half sunk in her pillow,

Turned aside as her breathing

Moved to the rhythm of the darkness.

Does she know in her dreams

If she’s sleeping the way I know?

Does she know I am always

Either inside her or nowhere?

Does she ever rise out of herself

To drift above our bodies

And watch like a hidden angel

As my finger follows

The tiny silk road of a single strand of hair?

This afternoon,

I’m going to find her

And touch her shoulder as I press

The simplest of kisses to her throat

And speak the silent words

Of a fractured spirit to the breath

Flowing down the river of her body.

And tonight,

In the room of precious secrets

Where angels and devils may not come,

I’m going to slap her body with my body

Like the baby animal she is

Until she slaps my body back

And opens the nectar glazed petals

Of the opium flower

I live to claim and plunder as my own

For the first time again,

Where she reduces me

To a flesh current of desperate quivering,

Swept up in the power

Of her soft, wet squeeze

Until the whole part of my life

I have yet to live

Slides up against hers

And the power of living

Inside another living, shining thing

Bursts out

In the wet revelation

Of everything as simple

As skin, breath and love.

And I vow to pay tribute to the day

With all the gold and silver left of my heart

For giving up these dark hours one more time

When I watch her sleep

And love her like some breakable thing.