You've got a tiny freckle on your arm
Beneath your wrist, it dapples pale skin.
I touched it with a naïve lover's charm
You flinched away with familiar chagrin.
Now, I know you're not one for compliments
A "thanks" and bashful smile's below you
I built not pedestals but monuments
I hoped you'd be able to climb onto.
Paperbacks lay in scores, scuffed by your gaze,
The austere piles of which still linger,
Your cigarette smoke formed your guileless haze:
Pinched between your middle and first finger.
We danced, from ruffled bedsheets to stone floors,
In arabesques of clumsy solace
Your collars, opened by your shirt's soft doors,
Bore gales till erosion made them flawless.
You've got a pretty large scar on your arm
Upon your wrist, a scratch of pale skin,
Rivulets of red and blue course on through
The crack from where those pedestals caved in.
