But can we have some more sex first? you’d asked,
reaching for me as I stepped from the bed,
passed through that shaft of busie sun

and me looking back over my shoulder,
laughing: sure of something for the first time,
knowing at last

that I stretched from earth to sky—
was a rooted thing, like a mountain, maybe,
and a spreading thing, like a green tree with ripe fruit;

so that when, later, you had gone
and I, undressing for sleep,
was stopped by smelling you on my skin—

not sex, but you—
the convulsion of longing
was total, sufficient in itself

because true; and my own pale shoulder
beautiful, and beloved of me,
because your head had rested there.

 

© Lucy Crispin 2020

This poem is the first in the sequence wish you were here.The sequence tells a story, and was first published by Hedgehog Press in January 2020. If you’d like to find out what happens next—and why wouldn’t you, frankly?—you can buy wish you were here here.