Whispers

Whispers

You are dead? I shake again
your arms
in a pantomime of expression. I curl
your lip, and wipe dead skin off your hair.
I paint
upon your sleeping eyes
your morning gaze.


You are not dead. I see you
with your old, hungry smile
that threatens to taste me whole.
I hear the sound of you offering
yourself against cold white satin.
Don’t you see? A live body
is roused… 
by your fire?


You aren’t.
Your shoes are wet again
on the bathroom floor.
I will scold you
later.
For now your rough hairs curl beneath my fingers,
And your breath quivers through me like waves.