There’s no way you haven’t noticed
that the western window—high
and horizontal on the white wall
of your bedroom, where we can look out
on the place where we wet our bodies lit up
with shifting lights like rainbows—
is wide open and all who are aware
—and by that, I mean absolutely nobody—
are witnessing the whispers
and whines from the lovely whatever
it is that we are doing. Your hand held
softly over my mouth. Your bent back
glowing like a vintage neon sign by the blue blaze
and then the silent static of the TV on standby.
The aroma of chicken, tender
and sizzling breasts and thighs soaked
for untold hours in honey sweet
homemade barbecue sauce
sneaking through the screen worn thin
by the relentless Las Vegas sunbeams.
The Stratosphere light in the cosmos.
The warm sweat of your want is on my skin
and I hear splashes and laughter:
our friends flipping off of the flimsy diving board
that has been flowering with rust since
forever. The day I learned how to dive,
I turned twenty-four, and you lay
on a pool chair to my left and flicked the water
with your fingers til four in the morning.
Your hands lit up by the pastel
Las Vegas moonbeams. We ate
mushrooms for my first time.
Only you heard my gasp—I tripped
and fell in the pool and took you
with me—but everyone else
heard the splash we made.
that the western window—high
and horizontal on the white wall
of your bedroom, where we can look out
on the place where we wet our bodies lit up
with shifting lights like rainbows—
is wide open and all who are aware
—and by that, I mean absolutely nobody—
are witnessing the whispers
and whines from the lovely whatever
it is that we are doing. Your hand held
softly over my mouth. Your bent back
glowing like a vintage neon sign by the blue blaze
and then the silent static of the TV on standby.
The aroma of chicken, tender
and sizzling breasts and thighs soaked
for untold hours in honey sweet
homemade barbecue sauce
sneaking through the screen worn thin
by the relentless Las Vegas sunbeams.
The Stratosphere light in the cosmos.
The warm sweat of your want is on my skin
and I hear splashes and laughter:
our friends flipping off of the flimsy diving board
that has been flowering with rust since
forever. The day I learned how to dive,
I turned twenty-four, and you lay
on a pool chair to my left and flicked the water
with your fingers til four in the morning.
Your hands lit up by the pastel
Las Vegas moonbeams. We ate
mushrooms for my first time.
Only you heard my gasp—I tripped
and fell in the pool and took you
with me—but everyone else
heard the splash we made.
