the acne scars on your back
are dark braille,
three-dimensional tattoos without images
your body is a soaking book.
you are coffee beans and low blood pressure
and the craters dug from your skin by adolescence
that ripen and swell soft
are sugar cubes and apple cores;
sweet
so we spill like acid onto the linoleum of our high school
and sleep, cycling the same mountain breaths
the nights we lie on our backs
nightmares filter in through our nostrils
the pockmarks on your back are epsom salt mines
and in the world’s asymmetry
they are rough
they are blank diamonds in coffee cups
you are a medical text in a dead language
vandalized with water-colour
your fingers are uneven carrots from my garden,
they are white with drought
but you are unclipped toenails
and espresso with a pinch of salt
so we snore through the night
and slip in the shower
we are moth-surgeons
radiating red
