She opens the door still buttoning
the last buttons of her shirt
with one hand, smiles hi and we’ve been
this way two times already, now three—
we know the chances but haven’t more than
kissed, we’re early enough to be
both sure and incorrect. Two minutes,
she says, fingers up and walking away.
She leaves the bathroom door open
as she fixes stray elements of herself.
On her living room walls are pictures
of her with friends—pretty groups
of pretty girls in pretty places, smiling
like they mean it—and I’m sorry my friends
and I have no pictures of the moments
we’ve come to love and retell
most—the midnight frisbee games, lakeside
wrestling stemming from too much
beer and too few thoughts to the contrary.
The time Dan and I climbed that tree,
age eleven, and halfway up, twenty feet into limbs,
Dan blanched and got a nosebleed,
admitted he was scared of heights,
how I had to unclimb the tree with him
on my back, his blood marked across
my neck, smeared on my ear as he held close
and whispered apologies the whole
descent—Come here, she calls from within her room
and I smile. I believe in Saturday night,
in a woman’s voice asking for me
from another room, in what maybe can
mean. She’s at her computer, one hand
on the keyboard and the other reaching back
for me, opening and closing like something
senseless, mechanical and charged.
I walk toward her clasping and unclasping
hand but can’t touch, fearful something’ll
spark, shatter, both. She uses both hands now
and with a keyboard click she summons
to the screen a picture of a penis with a woman’s hand
wrapped around it, with another click
the hand begins to move slowly,
with a silent click my body sweats
and howls. She looks up and over
her shoulder but I look down, past her face,
eyeing all the space between our bodies.
She draws my eye for a moment, offers an unsure
smile—nervous, questioning—then takes
my hand in hers, puts both on the back of her neck.
The hand so slowly on screen moves
and moves and I can’t look away
though her eyes prey over my face. I don’t know
how to ask What the hell is going on
and the video’s sounds—small human moans
of assent, a slow-building pleasure—charge
and recharge, repeating. To touch now would mean
an ignition, a shuddering beyond good
or bad and I look down at her nose
thinking blood, remembering how Dan looked
from the lowest branch as I lowered him almost
to the ground, his blood smeared across both our faces,
how his color returned as he left my grip
and fell to the earth’s, that final second
when his feet finally touched and how
he looked up so grateful, changed,
the edge of his mouth stark as something haunted.
It’s okay, she says, her hand on my hand
on her neck and my eyes on her made-up, shining lips,
watching her form words. right?
I say nothing. I nod. Dan was most scared,
he said later, of those last four feet—
the difference between two reachings,
couldn’t breathe from anxiousness for gravity
to grab and reclaim his shape, for his feet
to catch on something trustable. Right? she asks
again, her smile growing, hopeful,
drawing me into itself, something new. Right?
