18 September 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 3

Your Return

by DAVID J. ALWORTH

Your return brought many surprises.

I hadn't, for example, remembered

your habit of calling me Herman Tinklewip,

or your fascination with the sound

of my fingertips on your skull. So now

that I'm here hovering above you,

sprawled out like a mud-covered millipede,

how could you expect me to know

anything about the curve

of your collar bone

under my rumpled shirt

or the taste of your sunburnt elbow?

Each freckle had a name, once

and the line of possibility was

curved and free like something of cadence,

perhaps just as my mouth, hobbling

along this path of gooseflesh,

was itself cadence.

We've spent long enough, you said,

unsmelting the sorrow

of our hapless remembering,

like rinsing our mouths out with damp sand,

and now it's time

to practice forgetting—

your hands clamped around my face,

your teeth clenched around my tongue,

"Herman," you moan, again and again,

until the sun hits the crimson netting

in my eyes and your mouth

is dry as soot.