In Short, a Memory of the Other on a Good Day, 2
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- Category: Excerpts from Our Books
- Published: Tuesday, 04 March 2014 22:03
- Written by Super User
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ϰαρυάτις, Cundiff
Watching you close to sleep,
a clay comfort, your body warm in that space
right before midnight.
You may claim I’m too cold.
“Warm yourself before you touch me,”
you’ll say, smiling a little.
I suppose I’m some caryatid
to your earthy Minoan fire.
So I rub my hands together, on my thighs
and then again on your chest.
I want it lasting awhile or to have it over and over.
In those nocturnal pauses,
my crawling towards you as you start to sleep.
You move a bit, an invitation to that space of
baked earth, your body newly comfortable.
And when I match my breasts
to rise and fall with your dark chest
our bodies curled as fronds
and all the silence breathing around us.
The distance of rank and station falls away.
It is almost too much for a woman
with that sound of hide-clad feet against the earth
to take, repeatedly to man’s skin.
Where mine is soft, you are hard,
your line for my curve as our shapings
pressing together
their own breathing, their difference.