The leather of your jacket filled me, excavating smoke from my lungs.
I ran my hands across the deep, machined felt of the pool table as you told me
This wouldn’t be serious.
We were busy crowding a woman about to take her shot.
What comes next? Let’s see where this takes us.
We kept it light.
But when we locked together, the world fell away,
Consumed,
Swallowed whole by rich soil.
We ran back to your place, but
When you climbed on top of me for the first time, I froze.
You were a pro. You were like John fucking Heisman.
I wished I had a cooler of Gatorade on my bedside to pour on you after we fucked,
Because you won.
And you were so soft.
A still in my cloud, this storm was yours, and it was perfect.
An excerpt of both our lives, we experienced each other from our best perspectives.
This wasn’t staying in to watch a movie or meeting your parents.
This was raw, this was new, and so frightening, but you were so soft.
If we were not people,
Not in your bedroom, but rocks on a dry path or
Motes in a seaweed forest,
Your skin, your self,
Would be no less foreign to me than it is now.
Our pivotal intimacy peaked as we lifted each other’s fabric carefully,
And your command of hindsight came to be as an
Organic, yet calculated, flick of your tongue.
Your face on mine, the cars Speeding
Past your window etched our composition into the cement,
Driving us down until we lay empty.
Exploring your hills, fresh and barely touched;
Timid footpaths leading to the shore.
Your hair was in my mouth as we lay post, as in, after, the
Long list of variables leading to this eventuality.
And when we pulled apart,
I prayed to big magic that some of your atoms were buried beneath mine,
Sand crabs on my psyche.
I didn’t know if you were used to
Smelling roses,
But the time you took with me
Unfolded in fractals.
On the other side of your walls, the decking
Had frozen over.
Panel after panel of pressure-treated
wood lay alert,
So still, and us kindling for a distant sun.
We put on our shoes and underwear, no socks,
and Slid down the deck to my car.
This was our entrance.
And it was so sudden, so peripheral.
And you were so soft.
