There was a day once,
an afternoon in a friend’s room, stuffy
with the heat of pre-summer jitters
and my unease at watching you move

as you tried to teach me to dance.
So long ago that I’ve forgotten the songs
you played to tease me, timid,
into letting the sound slip down my spine
as you slid against me.

Still so close though, that the stutter in my chest
hasn’t stunted, as strong now as it was then,
the second you realized you felt it too
and rushed to turn off the music.

That same month you would take
blackberries from the vine with teeth and tongue,
your lips quivering parted, kissing the thorns that would trade
blood for berries and coming away without a scratch
as I laid lazy and awestruck in the branches above you.

The pressed powdered sugar of tiny clam shells dried,
snugged between the river rocks rounded
with patience and persistence, would watch us
trace the creases of each other’s hands
like interstate-map lines later, curious for the next best direction
far from your definition of you,
and seeing ourselves there already.

When my phone rang too many years to count later,
and a voice that could have crept from between the same lips
that tumbled onto mine in the thunderstorm sanctuary
of my car, answered with your name

the same confused hurt twisted in me
as when I watched you kiss her I-love-you
under the sick phosphorus glow of an empty parking lot
and lied like you to myself
over the murmur of an air conditioner audience.