Love is a sign of our wretchedness.  
         Simone Weil

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To begin with you, interrogating the purpose of my thighs
while I drank rum from a watermelon beat through

with blessings of oblivion. The beach folks went about it all
and I mounted you carefully like a thing wild on the sand.

Arrangements are for river rocks,
and I am not sure we ever had one besides fucking.

You were never one for understanding
the nurture of nature, much less love—

it was like you said, a tongue’s reaction is glorious,
and whenever you teased me, I pined for taste.

At the quartz lake, you were there again:

You, my cabbage pie.
You, my blind cure.
You, who lobbied flesh for fact.
You, who mistook kisses for curses.
You, foregoing me baseless and bound.

Right now you raft-sleep prone as a soldier,
water streaming beneath like piss

from a hound, but then
you are off, sucking in every sound
from here to Southport.

And me?
I am landlocked all akimbo—limbs splayed
like blood splatter, a filthy star stinking then gone.