Bedside, a Riversgrave

Woke alone with your 
taste still stalking me
 
and tried to pray. What
came up: roughed cough of love,
 convulsive thrust, hot cardiac rush going out
 
 thru the mouth; coming up from the pores,
 pouring from an almandine aperture
 
 bashfully bowing between
 curtains of sensitive
 
Skin. Radium oceans
spurt from the eyes – Swallow
 
  mine; swallow
 
  me. My mouth too
 
full of you. Your
 
sweet name too much to take. 
Outspurt over chin, neck, breast.
Your wordless, hungry sounds wet
my throat. Spill over me. I feel
 
need, in this blood, love, seed
 you’ve left
 
a life, or tumour blooming
in sex, belly, heart and lungs, growing
 
  in bone girders, groins, rooted
  in underskin mysteries. 
 
Hot, sweet salt of your long
gone name cooling, damp 
 
blanket of ache, stickily, over me
 
  and pooling in the vacant
  space here in this blank
 
bed, dried, a river’s grave,
a cheek tracked by tears, and body
dry with gone love’s smears,
 
and refusal to rise from the valley
of your smell, and refusal to bathe
 
or brush away your taste, for fear
of clear water, or hope that you’ll follow 
your own smell home, to your lair 
 
here, in this musky riverbed
of morning, and to the shredded
 
nest of this warm, half-eaten
light-shy and slowly drying heart.

© Sean Moreland