Muscle Memory
Over — before touching skin, she drapes, then touches,
through flannel, me. Maybe, to her, I feel
dead when, over me, her hands move, through the weave,
to touch my arches, ball to heel, then up, high
enough she must gather, like a curtain, and draw
the table sheet back. It is not rest where I, face down,
in the eucalyptus room, go. It is not breath she kneads
when, in me, she splits, realigns, a crossing of tissue. It is not
her who, from me, tenses a fire, an island, then
arcs, the length of me, knotting. Who rouses
therapied me first — the churn of his hands that slid, then
stilled atop me, me who, in commotion within me,
lay, like a crater, dormant. I warped, a chain she
shakes before striking hot the stone on my upper, then
lower back where, he confessed, he therapied to touch,
to think, when he was with his wife, of me, of my island’s
beautiful women, all alike and like its beauty. So,
he said, his hands a room, glacial. So beautiful,
my hardening she elbows, knuckles, then wrings. Breathe,
long, deep, she draws, then drapes, when I’ve died, my skin.
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