Late Afternoon
Carry me down into the liquid place again
where we meet without talking, even though
sometimes we’re talking, where we laugh
without making a sound, the punchlines
floating off untethered and the corners
of your mouth tilting up like commas
around some beautiful phrase we don’t
have to try to remember. Wedge your knee
between my thighs and slip your fingers
into me again, let them be glazed
with human light and lift them to your lips,
let them tell you what they found.
I’ll kneel before the sunset of your skin,
its pale tone beginning to blush, evenly,
every cell inspired to red, pushing toward
that ruddiness of purpose, that sigh.
My hands will wrap around the small tendons
of your wrists to hold you here, lowered
over me like clouds before a storm,
the enormous thunder and then the rain.
—Molly Fisk, from Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love, edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, 1996)
