it was his voice
lips against the receiver
rumbledown
and your fingers followed

white rooms and the sea
crashing inside your head
following direction
     touch it
tongue up against the phone, so plastic
but not between your thighs

cream, sugarflowers

how many hands?
how many hands have traveled you?
unraveled you?  just one voice

in creamswell surges
and the tide beat in and out all day
like my fingers remembering
lost voices, or his whispers from the sea
         (i heard him calling, maybe i�ve gone mad, she said)

all gone, the rooms like corridors
the whispers corridors
just one voice and then your thighs
         tilting fullbloom open, sugarflowering

that thing you took of his once
or that thing he took of yours
it burned whitehot    like grace

like so many words or poems
nights he talked you down into sleep and elsewhere
you�d fall all magnolia
        spread wide open
petals curling
        just around his sound

after he died you�d play it sometimes
over and over on that tiny tape
the very last message he ever left you
and you thought about his garden
        full of sugarflowers and moonlight

and the rooms where he�d lain, splayed

Previously published at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association