"there's your thumb...", 2

there’s your thumb sliding up and across my back,
resting in the brief space between my shoulders and neck.

i miss the cylinders in our cabinets -
shining dark, old and not ours at all -
and the window by our bed
with its ground-floor view of a weathered soft blue porch
and, further on, of neighbors playing with and punishing their children.

we would talk about sitting on the porch,
but for two years, the stained wicker couch remained unused;

most of all i miss the sweeping lifetimes we spent
trying to figure out how to fit our bodies together,
and how we would laugh at our successes and at our failures.

we would slide into dreams somehow,
late at night and not too tired,
streetlights casting mangled and shaking shadows
over our cheap blue blanket
and against the door we pretended was a wall.

early in the morning, i would wake up reaching for your arm,
for your neck where i’d bury my face until you had to leave for work.

my arms stretched out and open until you were gone,

the memory of your thumb
leaving me stranded, missing you.