Text + Body

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.