For These Intensive Purposes

You have a scar embedded in your left eyebrow, from the time you were five and played paramedic rescue with your very healthy cat; it is buried under the thick black Greek hairs that I press my lips to every morning, a few seconds after you wake. I trace the small chicken pox scar that indents between your nose and your cheek. I imagine I feel the skin pores I see underneath my finger tip, pretending you have "I love you" written there in Braille. I trace this line until I meet your lips, chapped from your mouth breathing in the winter air, and wonder how you transform them into the voluptuous ripeness that engulfs my morning rigid ritual. You purr lightly, breathe in deeply until my torso rises, and then

And then I move because / I'm afraid / I want to admire / you won't get enough air / the soft hollow that cups a small shadow at the base of your neck.

There is a little mole protected there, and it beats gently with your wakening heart. I put my finger there to feel the soft skin which protracts itself in widening circles, pouring toward each shoulder. They remind me of the perfume White Shoulders-but yours are brown-deep brown, the colour of the chocolate covered strawberries you make when you want to seduce me. Your arms move until your hands are folded behind your head; under your arms I can see tight curls of black hair. I prop myself up onto my elbows and watch your breasts raise themselves gently, they pour themselves toward the sides of your body, your ebony nipples relaxed and congruent against your skin, a flattened raisin. And then

And then I blow on them / place my tongue upon each one / until the raisins / pencil eraser / becomes inflated / stands in the center of the light blonde hair.

These blonde hairs ring themselves counterclockwise around your small pink nipple, then spread in a soft mat of fur sweeping across your chest. The hairs run toward each other, then point decidedly down, and using my finger I trace until your hard sternum ends and your muscles begin. You clear your throat slightly-your waking cilia dragging milligrammes of bar tar from your lungs and into your throat. Your diaphragm expands rapidly then compresses, my finger bounces up then hovers until you stop, then returns to continue its journey. Your chest hair inexplicably ceases from resembling the broad expanse above and now constricts to the width of the bulges created by your watching videos and slaving at the gym. You grow it there at my persistent insistence. I remove my eyes from my hand and look at your face, you notice me and then

And then you smile / move your hand from behind you head and / murmur good morning and / rub the big of my back and / gently scratch your side, your nails creating vanishing white lines in your skin.

I watch these lines fade into soft pink against your belly, then kiss the freshly raked skin, just above the point when your hourglass is measured at 30—and monthly at 33. Two miniature brown hairs point upward into your navel, framing the small bead of glass anchored to the ring you had installed last summer, with me holding your hand. I toy with it for a moment, smiling at the thought of the heavily tattooed man who inserted it as he wondered how "fucking awesome, dude" it would be to see the two of us just as we are, about to make love. I drag my silky cheek against you. I look at you, considering the somewhat sultry bleeding of last night's mascara on my lower eyelids. I lower my face and breathe in your scent filtering through your clothed lower half. You consider the moment, you purr, and then

And then you raise your hips and slip your fingers into the elastic of your green flannel pajama pants / white boxer shorts / and drag them down your thighs / revealing your pure white thighs / bronze legs covered with black hair.

I brush my stubble above where you essentially begin. I am at the place where you stand at attention, at the place where you fold into yourself. We create here.