When you don’t text this morning,
It’s clear you don’t know
what it’s like to fill the hollow pockets
of your body with another’s flesh and need.
The sacrum curved like an emptied cup,
twinned pelvic crests smooth and open
like hands holding out for more. I’m left
sated and sore in this lonely afterwards.
Your emptying, my emptiness, not the same.

Quivers fall down the spine from too much space
around me now, like a baby un-swaddled
too soon, or the way my father still drops
my gaze after a few seconds,
even as he mutters love you.