Ah, Love

Though many years have passed, and loves, I swear I can still smell the soaps this one would use. I can still see the mole on her left thigh, black eden lace against her northern skin. And I recall the thong straps she would wear, the camisoles and fishnets she would choose, brown archipelago in her blue eye, and how she opened doors and let me in. My lover in her room—a universe of small particulars: the way she moaned, the way she hinted which of us was worse, my lust-shorn shorts beside the book she'd loaned, and later verbal cruelties, each curse, and silence after she no longer phoned.