Your skin was milky in the photographs,
sepia, your belly button curving inward to black
like a drain. Your shoulders, lighter than the rest,
glowed like phosphorus among the other pictures
as you sent me sections of your body:
your neck, your boyish hips, your thighs.
I tried to piece you together in my head
each time the phone buzzed
to tell me there was more of you.
I sent you my body, cramming each gangly limb
into the air and bouncing flesh off cell phone towers.
At last you sent your face, hair tangled
around your cheeks, like you had been lying
down the whole time while I was standing
and posing in the mirror, like a boy
who just discovered that twisting his arm
produced a ball of muscle and that being naked
was okay, as American as two lovers
showing off without ever planning to touch.
Photo by Manuel
