poem: Dress Rehearsal

[xaara]

Dress Rehearsal

I start with your hands.
Twist them into surprise, fear,
fingernails to elbows to shoulders tipping
like a mast crooked
to unfavorable winds.

Your feet follow in my footsteps
or I follow in yours, blocked off
in neon tape, stage level. You turn
me turning into you turning
toward your my once future lover, dangerous
threesome with a man I don’t know
yet, not tonight. I haven’t met him
because you haven’t. Our feet point
to his feet. I don't know him.

I take your skin and fold it
into my own, your chin across mine
and your frown dragging my mouth
down, weighted fishhooks
at the keyholes. I wear your sagging back
and hips thick with farmwork, thick
and hard as living. Your lungs
fill mine with air you have breathed
like shotgunned cigarette smoke,
and breathe me your secrets,
honey breathe me what you know
so when I am you and we walk
skin in skin across that wood
together we make truth, baby,
together we are truth.