O lover,
O sweet boy -
I sit beside myself for hours, tremulous,
words or breath, moist, palms open as if
                to say "I am yours."

        And I think of you when I see
Khan 's painting — a woman, a man,
her hair twisted in his hand, lilies strewn
skillfully across
a marble floor.

'The Kiss' either beneath the window
or against the wall—
it does not
matter:
        your tongue slips and I col        lapse,
taste confection on [the wire].

The flat of my belly, dark hair, poised lip,
and finger— ex                posed,
               for you.

Seated now, along the rail, I shift, bend,
open, like a river to sea and I oh, oh,
the look in your eyes,
        the ache of         your hand—
        I am seamless, sweetened with
                each new touch.

Nails shape your back in red, map out where
we have been -
a fetish — dramatic pierce,
a maddened
kiss,
swept in a moment, like O'Hara or perhaps
the way Neruda might after a night of
                poetry—
how a woman taught him devotion in spring,
left his hand
ashen against paper.

                For you, my dress on the chair,
shadowed in the night, movements, soft,
unrehearsed
beneath the crest of your body.
I am brilliant, a silhouette on the backdrop of
Italy, where your storm sweeps me to reverie,
where I am stret                ched,

                like winter snow.

You brush a curl from my
cheek— your fingers tremble. I could lose
myself now,

        become adrift in your thoughts.
I could escape the heated air, the scent of flesh,
the bloom
of beauty before me,

to run toward the open sea, where I would
sink transparent on the sand, but my will is no
longer my own.

        And as dawn arrives, night slips out
—left are two lovers inside a painting, quiet on
canvas, exhausted and in love.



©2006 by Cherilyn Ferroggiaro