If what you touch
touches back, what bent
the first joint of the thumb
back so much that the pain
lingers for days after?
There, on the plane
of your upper thigh,
the long, thin shadow
of encounter with a blade;
and there, on a forearm,
the widening galaxy of a burn.
Now the tongue coated purple
says it remembers a rain of milk
that dropped from the sky before
the rafters fell, before musk
from ginger flowers
made public their wordless
interior monologue. Isn’t sugar
just another name for sorrow
in sparkly clothes? Envelopes
come in the mail almost every
day, but no one can be certain
which of them was held briefly
to the mouth before being sealed.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.