Don’t Touch Me

After the feast, the water hadn’t touched us in ages, and we laid there
with only our bodies left, the broken bread and soured grapes

from a three dime dinner days ago, when we couldn’t believe
the things we would say. I rose with morning while you were still, possessed

by your eyeshadow and vanitas, barely breathing, as though I were
the wind held back from the earth, the sea, or any tree while you slept, angelic

as disaster. I busied myself with counting the number, and of your body I found
twelve tribes of twelve thousand, the unmared few. And of those

slender feet and gentle calves, there were but two, and of those
heartened hips and folded arms, there were but two, and of those

leaven breasts and clasping hands, there were but two, unmared, and I
hung from your lips while the whole world heard your last murmured words to me:

Noli Me Tangere. Later that day, after awakening, you left me
enraptured and cursing the day I met you, and I wept, and wept, and hung on

that guilt of a man who was damned before he’d even earned his purse:
His hands before him, red with the wine of what she asked him to do, his body

hanging from what he’ll lose, back stretched and broken from heaven to hell.