A Flower Passed Between Teeth
Location
You are safe, she whispered softly
stroking the crest of my cheek with her thumb and I could feel
the ridges of her identity in the tips of her fingers
like I could feel the water wrap around my body
that one day we dove into Crescent Lake in Washington—
cool, catch-your-breath-shock but it’s so beautiful and
purest blue beneath here with you. Let’s hold the
air in our lungs for a bit longer and look up
at the world shimmering above us, sunlight mixing
in the water; all our clothes were on the shore so
we’d have something warm to come back to
but with her
hands around my waist I had all the warmth—I need
you, I whisper back across the covers and she
kissed me like a flower passed between teeth
to bare skin, bare soul and center of hope, I am so full
of a hope-and-fear-of-falling-from-
the-glass cocktail, stretching me surface-tension-thin, eyes wide,
please be gentle, please, please, into the dark I call
not expecting to hear an answer with doubts so loud
but she’s there, and she stays. She stays, with her lips pressed to my
sharp edges, takes me in her mouth until I melt and absorb,
bind to body and soul, she makes me a new
destination, and takes me home.
I am loved, I know.