Our Secret

Your scars were minutia compared
To the vastness of your smooth, lightly birthmarked skin.
You left, and I kept seeing them in my mind:
X marks across your shoulder blades.

I tell you that your scars are beautiful,
Words once told to me that changed my life.
They are your stories, I whisper.
One cannot try and hide his past.

Our fingers became entwined and
You kiss me inside the valley above
My collarbone. I shudder.
You have a beautiful mind, you murmur.

Omitting this moment, I have never been speechless.

I remind myself that it was better
To have passion for one day than
To never have felt any passion at all.
But you keep surfacing in my mental oceans.

You worry that the night we spent together
Represents promiscuity,
Some sort of personal blemish
Or call of bad judgment.

I worry that the night we spent together
Represents something other than promiscuity,
Some sort of lapse of judgment in
Letting someone get that close again.

I hover over you on my way to class,
Listening to the velvety tones of The Album Leaf:
One earphone in you, in me.
I cannot stop thinking how beautiful you are.

I know you have stories that I have never heard,
You have secrets that I may never know.
But at this moment it either does not matter
Or my cognizance of their presence is enough.

In bed we both bend and
Form angles, struggling to
Fit together, bend together.
No one wants to be alone.

I imagine your sleep,
Your dreams creating us into
Rubenesque characters with
Too-large fingers and infinite flesh.

I kiss your shoulder blade.
Your neck moves slightly
You remain in dreams.
My secret. X marks the spot.

--Ronnie Kaplan