Science of Sound

This song played just for me, she says,

Earring brushing her shoulder,

Head cocked in recognition.

Sound waves bounced off the toupeéd old man,

The napping usher, and all she heard

Was the Ab of your voice,

Its sparkle and glow, the sound

Of your hand on my spine.

The C# of springtime, soft air and a song I don't

Recognize, and at the end

The resolve of Middle C. 

You heard a different song.

When the wavelengths hit walls, the wheelchair

Two seats to your left,

Your hair, longer than its ever been,

Muffled the sound and you heard

An August D, the shallow resonance

Of the we that never were,

The distinctive Bb of your breaking heart

And at the end, the same Middle C,

Tainted now.

She smiles in nostalgia and you reduce to tears

Across the theatre.

The same sounds, and yet,

We've never heard the same song at all. 

[exploration of space while brushing teeth]

You brushed your teeth with the lights off,
saying the contrast made your smile whiter.
Once you leaned over the sink and I,
so deft at your geography,
mapped the pitch and chase of your spine
with my fingertips.
I found your three scars,
chicken pox, age four,
a thin delta constellation clustered
in the night sky of your skin.
Five-point stars in red Sharpie
gave my hands a new path to follow
while you put away your toothbrush,
turned to face me, your eyes
sliding over the supernova between us.

Halfway to Virginia

I sprawled naked beside you
and felt your pulse in my bloodstream;
my pale sweltering heat,
your palms like a canopy.
At first glance we were carbon, mild,
but we both felt a crimson shudder,
the breakwater of tide,
and slept tangled to prove it.
I'll never know if you caught me in your teeth
to slow my fall
or devour me,
but the clock ticks on and your heartbeat
still parades through my cells,
a gong at midnight.
Two slick torsos caught
in the pull of tide
with the moon only speeding up the process.

The Edge of Childhood

I called you the day my childhood tipped up at the ends,
crumbled beneath its eggshell satin finish,
and disappeared.
We stapled missing posters
to maimed telephone poles,
checked behind the too-tall rosebush
for a grinning little girl.
She didn't show until the first of June,
two days before my twelfth birthday;
I saw her scratching a scab at the bus stop,
plastic stick-on earrings and a tutu,
mom's makeup dabbed on her mouth, cheeks.
This is how
I must look
in lipstick.
I've spent my whole life since
measuring the distance between then and now.