Beneath the deep lashing
when a sweet pain blooms
through your aching nerves,
I wonder if I'm still there. 

I can still feel you,
it's in the blood,
in the heart.

The sharp intake of breath
when you cannot utter a name,
when you're reduced to whimper
and shivering naked flesh.

There can be no words in that moment
when your nerves signal a painful flood
that has learned to become a blissful tide,
I'm still whispering in the undertow
And I don't know if you still hear me. 

I don't know if your palms still recognize
how I traced them over and over,
whispering that those lifelines had gaps
that were a perfect match to my own.

Or how I counted every breath
after you slipped away into sleep
and the number never really mattered,
I was just enraptured to listen closely,
to hear and sense a beautiful world breathing,
naked and warm as we remain entangled,
bodies safely braided through the night.

But beneath the deep lashing
where a sweet pain bloomed, 
a pain I don't quite understand,
I wonder if I'm still there.

I can still hear you saying my name,
a calling that's imprinted beyond
any mark that a lash or rope could leave,
that pure second of exhaled breath
went far beneath skin marked
and still burning with a delicious sting.

There can be no words in that moment
when pain crystallizes into bliss,
when your nerves shudder 
and the body folds into ecstasy,
a raging river that becomes an ocean
and I'm still tracing you in the undertow.

You wouldn't really feel me there
beneath where I wanted you differently,
where it was piece by slow piece,
a slow blooming that's the very opposite
of what has and will open your skin without me.

I can't stop feeling you there.

It's in the blood.

It's in the heart.