Chosen Belonging

 

Chosen Belonging

I know I call too much. Still the receiver
clicks dead between us and the ache returns—
this bed, remade, too wide, too coldly clever,
a stranger’s territory where desire burns
without your weight to anchor it. Half a world
away, the clocks run opposite; love keeps
its own erratic time. They praise the girl
who “pulls her weight,” who smiles, who never sleeps
the way she did when your hair fanned the pillow
and left its dark calligraphy across the case.
Call it whatever name you like—Mr. Positive,
they joke. I laugh. The sidewalks hiss and race
with other bodies, busy, blank, unknown.
Only your face belongs framed in my door;
only your footprints track the hardwood floor. The rain draws silver maps across the pane.
I trace them idly, thinking how even the sky’s
most delicate line fails to explain
the particular grace your shoulder makes, the rise
of your small breasts, the slow, deliberate slide
of your thigh across mine. Your voice is sweet
on the long-distance wire, but it cannot hide
the fact that skin is what the body needs to eat.
Nightlife spills under streetlamps—girls in pairs,
laughing, their bare arms gleaming like yours once did—
and every silhouette becomes a snare
that yanks me back to you. I want you here, not hid
behind a continent. I want the heat
of your bare back, the salt taste at your throat,
your pretty skin instead of any note
your pretty voice could send across the dark.