Bit my tongue so hard I tasted copper in the dark,
and the wanting pulled me under like a riptide finds its mark,
her body is a current I’ve been caught in since the day
she walked across the parking lot and took my breath away.
Not metaphor — I mean it — lungs forgot their only work,
and now I’m lying sleepless while the muscles coil and jerk
with phantom recreations of the way she climbs a stair,
the hamstring flex, the calf in motion, wind against her hair.
Undertow of the libidinous, the feral and the raw,
dragging me through every detail, every flaw-that-isn’t-flaw —
the scar below her shoulder blade I’ve only seen in sun,
the way her stomach tightens when she laughs at what I’ve done.
I’d give a year for ten damn minutes with the lights turned low,
my mouth against the hollow where her neck meets clavicle’s bow,
hands remembering the topography of everything below
the hemline, past the boundary of the decent and the slow.
The ceiling fan does nothing but remind me she’s not here,
this concupiscent undertow is brutal, sharp, and clear —
I’m dragged beneath the surface of every civil thought
by the incandescent image of the body that I’ve sought.
Three a.m. and counting, tangled, sweating, wrecked and strung,
the taste of copper fading but the wanting’s still among
every nerve and tendon, every inch of fevered skin,
this undertow keeps pulling and I don’t know how to swim.