Each mouth and a microphone, the crisp of saliva, each thick throat—
The between breath, its pull, the tow of fingernails forward for whom—
Its pull, the heaved hand from another, one hand left with what—
The hollow of age, the hollowing skin from each breath taken in—
Between each hollow white sits hollow black. Between each “sits”—
Within the white: my nervous palm, then, awareness of your left side—
He said “lips on my neck” I thought your neck I saw your left hand—
Pause to shift back to subject as “each pairing isolates another world”—
After this many inhalations, the skin of the cheeks are pulled inward—
What is in the lips is filled with dark matter, black holes’ gravity—
The thin skin goes first, the heaved hand from heavy hand leaves—
The air between each joint left, the cracks of each bone left, on your left—
Within the black: some shoes, black mud, your rubbing placid eyes—
Within my want: over his your scrap metal voice, torque of the rub—
Whose hands held the saw that cut your voice jagged: fathers’ hands—
Mine paired with mine, yours paired with yours, count inches between—
Second goes the space of the shape, the overlap of personal shape—
The beat amid the breath as sharp as gunshot, the puncture on breath—
Concavity then, the weight of itself on itself, unable to resist the pull—
Every word falls away or under the next, a constant touch a numbing—
The city is grayed at the intersection of our black and white hollows—
Within the stairwell: windows’ glass cannot know the two from the sky—
Rain smearing words away, muting thought, save the thought of touch—
Between two floors and the inevitability of the gravity, of the collapse—