Linger

I’m wading in the memory of the magic of last night
When our bodies, slow and tender, came together and took flight
It’s not a flashback, it’s time becoming space
The path along your back that my fingers softly trace

You say you hear the ocean when you rest against my chest
You’re the moon lighting my skies, pulling my tides when we undress
I whisper in your ear words of joy and love and peace
We shed our mortal skins, begin to revel in the release

I’d like last night to linger
Like your ring around my finger
Not the bee and the stinger

I’d like last night to linger
Like the song, not the singer
Not the bee and the stinger

That energy between our bodies never seems to sleep
It’s sacred and it’s separate, a smoldering secret that we keep
It pulses in my gut and chest and dances on my tongue
Slips between our mouths with the breaths rising from our lungs

It was restless and impatient in the first decades of my life
It was jubilant, knife and flint, when you became my wife
And even now when we must pull out before we are immersed
It voices its desire in a deep unyielding thirst

I hope last night will linger
I won’t meddle, I won’t tinker
Not the bee and the stinger

I know last night will linger
With the contours of your figure
Not the bee and the stinger

What will I do with you?
What will you do with me?
We’re deep in dangerous terrain of impossibility
You stand upon the shores of my calm and raging sea
We reach out for the stars and pick out shards of eternity
Bind ourselves in fraying rope and yearn just to be free

What will you do with me?
What will I do with you?
We made it up the mountain but there was no time for the view
The murky waters cleared into an eerie shade of blue
The kisses multiplied and went from many to too few
I’m crafting poems every day but language just won’t do