By Katie Kapugi
Ankles fettered to twisted sheets,
your inclination, the angle
of your body in golden light,
is slanted–
crossed by the crooked shadow of bent blinds,
A positive declination on a lumpy hotel mattress.
You seem a creature distant,
unscathed by the dewy freckling
of sweat on the bridge of your nose,
the horizontal intensity of light
in your magnetic blue eyes
brings ice to my marrow.
We had been like a compass disrupted
by currents—whirling east, west
with our legs—spinning north, south
with our hips—undulating in
total intensity until the jolting end–
when your attraction became repulsion
a chasm of foreign fields, of wayward worlds–
you sit up, turn away, the elements of our tryst
no longer alluring, you wear self-loathing–
vertical and tense–in the muscle of your back
Beautiful!