Your body is a word
I’m dying to pronounce, hypnotized
by the boy tensing inside you, skin

like polished ivory, lips like coral threads, panther-waisted
Dutch-sketched equestrian
leaning on horseback, self-esteem

sculpting his shoulders
like linen. Sun just up, he is—you are—
twisting your torso toward the world, the true and fictional world

I thread, a true and fictional girl
blushing against a sun-shot wall,
vined and veined with desire for you

to be who you are: girl
and boy, alone
and smitten, ridden and riding off

on wondrous muscles,
tree of life and untreed soul
ringing like a crystal bowl,

thoughtless water and the thinking sky
reflected in the river
the dead undrink when they return to life

determined to remember
who they were when they ditched the world
to become naked words,

unpronounceable, fictional
and wholly true
as you.