When I think of you it is two grainy, green oceans
mauling my lungs and my eyes and my tattered toes
as my ribs melt to but dust – grayed, airborne
and oxygen is like straight Lysol on my tongue
I love it.

There are phantoms tracing my anti-cookie cutter body;
they row through the clumps of flesh like tarnished, panting Vikings
but they are gentle ghosts,
peaceful ghosts
think cherubs or sunshine or rain.

So with each curve of heaving, veined, pink beauty
– or lack thereof –
I miss and fear you all at once.

And I strive to remember your smell –
like bales of hay or cat fuzz or
how cold soil tingles in the nose of early forest.

or maybe dew.

and I strive to remember your touch –
careful and learned
like deer hooves on clover or
chalk in an artist’s shimmery hair

or maybe clouds.