Marginal Notes

The lightness of your skin lifts

me without feathers into an atmospheric

coma, sifting flour through my fingers,

looking for gold in a placer on the southern

bank of an oxbow. Blankly I stare

into the infinite depth between your

freckles, the green in your eyes sprouting

from fertile soils, not hyberbolizing

into the grand and methodical void where

we used to swim on summer's nights,

letting the moon paint our bodies white

as we lifted off our shirts and let goosebumps

illustrate our arms and legs as our clothing fell

limply to the black beneath us. And we, shadows

in film negatives, dived into the cold and drowned

for an hour. I would look at you looking at me and up

into the stars we would fall, dancing like a paperback

in your hands at night in the half-light

my parent's living room. You would sit there, eyes

traversing the terrain with precaution, lips

mouthing the words written in pencilled margins.

Your legs would droop over the arm

of the chair, as if morning had missed the last train

and would arrive late. But morning, we both knew,

would never come again. So I stared

into the chasms and cravasses of your skin,

and let the wind lift me, with the lightness

of your skin and without a jacket

in the evening air, to the peak of Vesuvius,

where I would sit and watch the sun rise

for eternity, as around me orange tongues

would lick the air and warm me.