When you are naked, New York dissolves like sugar. Sirens

cry themselves to sleep. The million vulgar conversations

within earshot silence, become a vigil. When you are naked,

there is no murder in the world, no police. Streets wash

themselves of people. Only this room remains, & your body

is a forest, bones swaying like pines in the dark. I listen

like an owl for the wet snap your lips make when they part.

I am blind, but I know the electronic pulse of the billboard

paints you red, then black, then red. Your voice, though:

what I remember as indigo & purple, many shades of dark.

My hand on your breast is a stethoscope. Your heartbeat

is too loud for your body; it echoes off the windows & walls.

I can see by it. When you blush, your blood makes an audible sigh

against your skin. The room temperature rises by one candle flame.

When you decide to take me, the scent of you changes

like the wind: first carrying a field of violets, then suddenly

the sea, low tide. Zinc. The sun on wet basalt. February days

that suggest earth & pollen beneath the snow. Wine, but only

your own wine. When you exhale in my ear: the crash of waves.

When I kiss your neck, the down lifts like grass released from dew.

When I enter you, I dive into a river to escape a burning house.

My curse is that you cannot lie to me. Now we’re cursed

together, both riding your heartbeat like a black horse.

I listen to your pleasure running towards us like a girl

far across a field; you cannot see her yet. I catch each breath

missed, or hiding in your lungs. Every sense kisses you.

I feel you take the rhythm when you can’t ask, master

your greedy love, & guide me deeper into your body’s music.

When you change how your hips tilt, many raindrops splatter me.

The room’s becoming humid as your sweat becomes mist, or fear

surrenders & braver, louder you sing out into steam. I hear the

running girl laugh now. I feel inside you the wave summoned by

the shore: Rise. Curl. Froth. Now breaking, pinning me to the sand.

When you come, it smells like thunder & train oil. When you come,

it sounds like pigeons flying from a rooftop when a bomb explodes.

But your blood can’t deceive me. Lover, I heard you die. Just

for a moment, your heart seized, & I knew you were doomed.

I have never slept with a woman who wasn’t fated to die young;

their bodies all betrayed them. I knew which way their tumbling

lives spun, as sure as autumn falls. The blind are always prophets.

What makes me brave: to lie with you & your pleasure, cooling, both

of us damned. Knowing how you finish, I’m a man without fear.