I want to describe the place,
where you think I am
after we've made love 
and our beings are spent.

Your fingertips slowly roam 
across my bare chest in
such a gentle way that contrasts
the way you raked before.

And the afterburn is little more
than nerves torched and suppressing screams,
I suppose such invoked violences are this quiet
and I'm taken back to a coast you knew nothing about.

I'm back there alone watching the dark tides
reflecting the stars in a California sky
where I was hugging a punctured heart
against my own while saying goodbye.

I'm back driving through the valley
where the city's neon is an afterglow 
just faintly touching the sinuous road
past midnight when I left her house
for what would be the very last time.

You wouldn't know that I'm there,
but I'm more present with you than ever,
you'll still ask where I've gone after us,
because even as you breathe across my chest

I'm still tearing through the valley,
wondering what I said that was so wrong,
wondering if I just got too close,
I suppose such invoked violences
to the heart are always this quiet.

And that wind carried a mysterious sweetness
just as the feel of your breath upon bare skin does
and maybe that's what this has really been along,
maybe every beautiful memory we make
is just an invisible connective tissue
and even though the past comes in flashes,
I'm here and safely enfolded with you.

I was going to describe the places,
where you think I've gone
after we've made love 
and our beings are spent.

You were already sleeping
and the drumming in my chest
was the rhythm you drifted off to,
my fingertips roam the bare plane,
the soft smooth small of your back 
and I began whispering.

And the story was little more 
than an afterimage of places and people
and flashes that have come to
both shape and scar my entire heart.

I'm here with you now and done whispering,
the smallest smile curving your lips
and I don't yet know if you heard everything,
if you are tuned to smile from my voice
or perhaps you're elsewhere for now.

But I want you to know that I'm here.

I don't want those other snapshots anymore,
only the tracts they left behind,
I want this invisible connective tissue
to become a history with only you.