I feel the needle graze the soft epidermal hairs
rocking in their sockets,
then plunge through pink cell membrane,
reddening sheaths of fascia,
minute estuaries of the heart, piercing
the constellation of nerves in spinal orbit
to the desiccated interior of my disc.
I always thought the sky would fall,
if at all, in one swift collapse,
not like this slow narrowing
where I can still remember kissing you
and how you climbed up me
like spring clematis, greening and flowering in,
effusion of blossoms
more beautiful the longer I smelled you,
tensile and twining through,
till I nearly believe again in my life—
its unbounded striving for light—
and I'm as young as you
with your dark-water eyes and relentless body
vining up into vast currents of sky
opening, astonishingly, to receive me.
