She swallowed me,
when we were young;
or sidled like a shoplifter,

over, till our outlines joined.
Sometimes I vibrate
just above her body,

so she can feel the air
move through her spaces.
And when she can’t

talk about her parents’ wills,
or panics before a trip,
when her heart breathes

drab flashes of fear through
a body so roundly single it peals,
it’s me, rousing, missed;

sometimes I fill the mouths
of her friends and lovers,
their cells aligned to my payback,

move them, just, at odds
to hers; one in particular,
the head of the lionhaired girl,

I make the different mouth mine,
almost, I ride in its more brilliant
cage of teeth, and she’s so lonely

she thinks it’s her fault
that she can’t choose between love
and envy. I do this

so she knows what it is
to be almost, and not-
enough. And when she is only

a swatch of dream-air,
floating over the left
shoulders of her protagonists,

it’s me, then, too, I rope our body,
and I make it run,
I tire her before morning.