Under the bathroom light I examine every particle of you.
A taxonomist with a specimen, I trail through
the topography of your naked back, classifying
whorls and curlicues. These signs lie beneath our daily clothing
in ordinary comfort until breached by a touch
of strangeness, spider legged or some such
alien fingering. Your empaled flesh
was once the signal for our two bodies to mesh
like heated glass, but now I read a palimpsest

of time relinquished. This eight-legged incubus,
vampiric creature, descended from a tree or grass,
sprung from a crevice, souvenir of our walk
in the tentative spring warmth, this is the creature I stalk
with tweezers and with the slipknot of knowing
how a fold or curve or stiffening of your skin
is now unremarkable. No longer the burn
that flared, the quickening marvel as each turn
of supple wrist exposed a new place to learn,

and enter into our secret gazetteer; now those knowing fingers
wipe away the crumbs of our domestic days. Our communion lingers
in the two daguerreotypes of you, splinters thrown
from these pale vehicles carrying us through the world, alone.
And then I see it, just below your shoulder blade;
a tiny octopus with tentacles splayed.
I pluck it out. This small invader, quick impaler so fleetingly
attached to you, is yet a startling quiddity;
of once how close you were to me.