O lover,
O sweet boy -
I sit beside myself for hours, tremulous,
words or breath, moist, palms open as if
����������������to say "I am yours."

��������And I think of you when I see
Khan 's painting � a woman, a man,
her hair twisted in his hand, lilies strewn
skillfully across
a marble floor.

'The Kiss' either beneath the window
or against the wall�
it does not
matter:
��������your tongue slips and I col��������lapse,
taste confection on [the wire].

The flat of my belly, dark hair, poised lip,
and finger� ex����������������posed,
�������������� for you.

Seated now, along the rail, I shift, bend,
open, like a river to sea and I oh, oh,
the look in your eyes,
��������the ache of���������your hand�
��������I am seamless, sweetened with
����������������each new touch.

Nails shape your back in red, map out where
we have been -
a fetish � dramatic pierce,
a maddened
kiss,
swept in a moment, like O'Hara or perhaps
the way Neruda might after a night of
����������������poetry�
how a woman taught him devotion in spring,
left his hand
ashen against paper.

����������������For you, my dress on the chair,
shadowed in the night, movements, soft,
unrehearsed
beneath the crest of your body.
I am brilliant, a silhouette on the backdrop of
Italy, where your storm sweeps me to reverie,
where I am stret����������������ched,

����������������like winter snow.

You brush a curl from my
cheek� your fingers tremble. I could lose
myself now,

��������become adrift in your thoughts.
I could escape the heated air, the scent of flesh,
the bloom
of beauty before me,

to run toward the open sea, where I would
sink transparent on the sand, but my will is no
longer my own.

��������And as dawn arrives, night slips out
�left are two lovers inside a painting, quiet on
canvas, exhausted and in love.



�2006 by Cherilyn Ferroggiaro