Chest press together. Legs shift, find space. My hand follows an old path— the groove of his back—from shoulder to sweet curve below, marked with the day’s scent. I think of what I will become later in a box tucked in white-branched clay. Each day I lift my face to sun, carry its heat with me. Like the spruce tree, I bear the breeze. Like the tree, the wind batters me. The world will etch me in ink, but that’s a vain thought. It knows nothing of me. I am no more than pebbles or a rain-flecked stream. In our bed there are no keys, no locks, no doors, only the heat we generate, the wet tongued moments that carry us through bruised and yearning days.
Published in Rogue Agent September 2022