The American Poetry Review

THEN, A LONGING

My heart is the son of my body and it wants you.Do you know how much that aches? Like a salt bathfor the blistered. Like a cold that haunts the bone.It betrays me and I kneel to it; wouldn’t you call thata kind of theft? A kind of breaking-in? In any unspokenlanguage, shame is a palindrome that riddles me:through the holes, a blue moon whistles nearby,me and all your untouched desires gathering. At nightevery bell is your voice ringing my name. I am alreadywillingly of you, ungainly with consent. May I touchthe clouds of your chest with my fingers? Am I fatedto be the lover who begs?

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