Words are Symbols for our Hands in the Dark

NOTE: the formatting on this thing is awful...so i'm going to have to present this in a much worse way.  Damn blogs.

We can still see our outlines underneath
the covers.  That’s not right.  We close our eyes.
It’s our last time, and everything needs to be
     perfect.
I reach: pelt you with feathery queridas, cradle
your breast inside the cup of my palm—That’s my
     thigh.
O, sorry.  I’m not sorry.  Everything is going as
     I imagined.
A home isn’t beautiful until the builder’s hands
     are bloodied.
A birdhouse isn’t a birdhouse unless the squirrels
     can creep
inside.  You are telling me this.  Your fingers
     slip
Morse code into my chest like ballots.  They trail
across the bridge of my sternum, tracing animals
into my ribcage.  O, it’s a canary!  O,
     it’s a bull moose!
O, it’s a salt water crocodile!  A finger sinks
     into the sponge
of my lips, and then, shh, another.  Is it yours?
 It feels different.  Did I get it? you ask me.
Something is rubbing my stomach.  Almost, I offer,
try and dig a little deeper.  You dig.
The finger that is not yours wrestles with my
     tongue.
I swim my hand through your hair.  I put my
     pointer to use:
this is you, it laughs: this is the pocket of your
     earlobe;
this is your shoulder blade; this is the
     circumference
of your wrist.  This is what it feels like:
like a bare heel pressing into mud; like diving
 into quicksand and springing skywards in Jiangsu.
A hand, yours, grips my buttocks: Is this me too?
Now hold on a second, I say, I feel something. 
     I do:
someone is nibbling at my side.  Are those
     your teeth?
They don’t sound like your teeth.  No answer.
My heels touch down somewhere in the dark.
I am confused.  I am alone.  I stamp my feet
against the sheets.  I roll around in the mud.
I pick up the remnants of you: here is the shorter
of your arms; your left hand.  Here is the eyelash
     you could never shake.
Here is your tibia, spinning circles; your uvula,
     resonating Mi.
Here is the last thing you ate, a still-beating
     heart.  Here
is a fractured memory: your forehead pressed
     against another.
Here is the tent you preferred to bed, the palms
     you preferred
to pillows.  Here is the drum of your ear;
     Someone’s  voice
trilling into the drum; hands pounding the drum;
hips massaging the drum; kneading the drum;
here is the drum and needing the drum.
Here is the only part of you I’ve never kneaded.
Here is the only toe I never named. Your littlest
     toe.
I think I will call her Esperanza;
I think I will take her home;  I think I will
     leave her
on the dresser drawer, and on the nights I refuse
     to sleep,
we’ll lay there, together; imagining the rest of
     you, sobbing
her, not me.