She wanted a man whose touch would burn, and he learned
her body so well
whole bedsets melted under them. He complains of the ghost
in his hands: a tactile memory
of joint angles, pressure at fingertips, blood vessels constricting
& dilating, preserving the heat
given & taken between stomachs, thighs, mouths. By the end,
she guessed his plan,
wore pants & long sleeves to sleep. It was a transitional summer.
He said love & bodies are always
in flux. For the sake of anthology, she responded, we must bind
lives neatly into novae
of destruction. Or creation. It depends on who is gravity,
and who is the core.
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