Love Poem

I have forgotten more than most women know of how the body yearns. Late night, my poems of you are read out loud in strange women’s bedrooms. My words cling to their tongues like the sweet heat of penny candy. They can’t stand it! Still, they want more and they refuse to spit you out. Isn’t that how love is? They question themselves as they recycle each line while, maybe, a tabbycat presses closer beneath the sheet and digs in familiar places. Women wonder: Is it their lack of something or just their misfortune for never having met someone like you? And they lean hard against the porcelain sink, night gown clinging to damp thighs, as they scrub the syrup off their teeth. Isn’t that how love is? So tonight, while you are too far from me, I write this poem and somewhere, some woman, someday will read it and tell herself that she will ask for nothing more, ever, if she is given the chance to be close enough to press an ear against her own lover's chest, close enough, to lose count of the rhythm of a heart that only beats for her, close enough to breath in his exhale-- grateful for the gift of it. Because isn’t that how love is?