DUET

Under a duvet of darkness,
ears softening
in the silence,
you peek over.
Who could predict this?
An unfurling,
each touch
with the power
to part lips.
Making of their shading
and highlighting
a school of tactile undertow
that can pull or draw by
softest sixteenths
arterial eddies and ripples,
candlelit flickers
glancing the outer cheek,
shimmerings that shape
the banks of a river.
This isn't parenthesis.
This is the trouble clef.
Everybody hears
what they desire.
Always it is the same.
The purity
in the longing.
What we hear
is almost a tonic,
yes and yes with
each shivering breath,
climbing the scales
of the dark.
You are free to sigh.
I cannot of course read music.
Only these scars
curled like lashes
around your eyes.
Listen.
A whisper’s siblings
vibrate into
quick muscled twitches
and tightenings,
condensing
in saline beads,
swirling sibilance
of an unbounded bed,
The stream
spills its banks,
pooling itself,
pulling gleaming abdomens
and tangled legs
beneath disbelief's blanket,
where a tender tremoring
involuntary dances.

Invisible by day and silent by night,
her wisdom curls like a cloud of ash
from a jagged cone.