Route 35

your soft shoulders roll fragile, fluttering
moth in the cold; i am wearing only

indifference to highway scars.
when clothes are gone,

what's important, in the dark?
not the nudity, not the skin

you call tired, not the veins,
the moles, the breasts

you're afraid i'll see.
it's this smile, sugar dusty

backroad driving straight
towards every herbgarden

i thought i'd left to my tail lights,
under jungle-gyms in the park,

freedom i didn't know from handcuffs.
soft, powdered snow,

you are so almost, such slight
fancy, thin streak of please

in the moonlight,
i've seen more than your body

scared back to sixteen
on a midnight mattress.

call these few wrinkles creases.
this skin, parchment; these veins, blue highways.

i will make you into a map
i have unfolded, to find us both back home.