7 Things You Should Know About The Poetry Of Female Anatomy

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1.

This point- right here on her bare back, where I touch
and she giggles and pulls my face closer till her breath
fogs my skin with a mist of tickling happiness- reminds
me of bulletproof glass, transparent enough to show you
an entire city through her eyes, but opaque enough not to
shatter on impact

2.

When she pushes me onto the couch and straddles my thighs,
I feel like Atlas with his quivering heart, and the world
resting on his naked skin

3.

Her mind is a paradox, not because
she can’t decide where to eat on Friday nights or what to wear
to poetry readings, but because she can feel sad on some nights
and happy on others, and she needs
a hug and some ice cream for both

4.

The way sunlight filters through her loose strands of hair
when she wakes up every morning, is like lying on a forest floor
and looking up at the sky through tree tops

5.

When she’s sitting at her desk busy writing- while the late afternoon
yawns its way into a sulking dusk- her back slightly arched- her eyes fixed
on the words in front of her, she reminds me of the Golden Gate Bridge,
and I feel like a seagull circling her magnificence,
breathless
and in love
with a monument I knew to be a person

6.

I can always tell what she’s dreaming of,
from the heaving of her chest when she sleeps-
when her breasts rise and fall like surfers streaking fearlessly
through salty waves, I know she’s in Paris,
drunk and doing cartwheels on her hotel bed- when her breath feels
like the coming of a storm, she’s searching for the river
she’d met once, in a city with stammering boys in blue jeans
and a church she remembers
by its afternoon shadow

7.

Her hands change seasons,
warm when she holds her coffee cup to her thirsting lips,
cold when she undresses me on winter nights,
and when she gets up in the middle of night
and fills a glass with water to the brim
which I know she’ll only drink half of and pour the rest under her favourite bonsai,
I swear you’ll hear the fluttering of sparrows in her palms,
and the smell of orchids lingering till dawn