Though We No Longer Possess It

Mark Jarman

Would you know me, my body at least,
if I had become only that: a mound
under a sheet. Without the disguise
of my voice. Without that look
you could never be sure of,
moving about in my eyes. Stripped
and stretched out on a slab, I would be
all you could ever identify.

I know, if asked to give your body
a name, any mark I had left on you
would be gone or too secret to touch.
Without your hands on my hips. Without
my tongue in your mouth. Your back
against stone, I could believe
the cold in your skin. I could say
as they lay half-open and gray
by your sides, those are her hands.

The arms with which we surrounded
each other, embrace a thin crust
of emptiness. Called on to say
if some cast-off life
was ever entangled with one
of our own, it would merely mean
recognition: coming back
to a room we have left, and saying,
that bed is still a bed
though we no longer possess it.