Every other freckle

Shivani Bajaj

Every other freckle was playing on the surface of my skin when

I walked you through corridors of conversation and into my room;

“I want to share your mouthful.

I want to do all the things your lungs do so well.”

So, I pushed you on a blue bedsheet and made smoke stains on your lips

before you tasted like tongue and cigarettes in my mouth.

I unbuttoned your shirt and untangled the flowers on your chest

when my fingers smudged some dried paint on your brown skin from late last night

 and I wanted to perform poetry on your paintings.

You slipped your hand under an elastic band to break me in a sweat

before you tasted like fingers dripping in white milk.

And every other freckle played louder on the surface of my skin when in a second

I walked you through corridors of conversation, into my room and almost in me;

“I am going to bed into you like a cat prance into a beanbag

Turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet”

But suddenly you slowed down the afternoon slipping under my sheets and held my hands above my head;

you repeated some words from the other night and the many times we had talked about  having sex and

whispered them along my collarbones as if they were from a prayer that would save you from some end;

I want to enter a love that has been made, not a love in the making.

I want to enter you when you are a home, not when you are just a person.

And I promise, I tried paying attention as you whispered this again and again

for what seemed like three minute and forty eight seconds until

you believed that you had held my hands and hung me out to dry on a cloth line

 because your fingers only found me more wet than the last time.

But darling you wanted to sleep in a garden when I wanted to be stripped naked of flowers.

So when every look in your eye, ordered a deep breath in, I answered in heavy breathing

and “devour me” were all that, that the damned song and I were left singing.

                                                                     * * *

P.S. The quoted lines are lyrics from Every other freckle by Alt-J