I keep a file of all the hickeys you’ve ever given me, sandwiched between
the tax forms and voter registration applications.
Some are milky white, like the cloudy iris of a blind man’s eye,
while others are dark navy blue, the color sorrow would be
if it were part of the rainbow. The sweetest ones, trailing along
the edge of my collarbone, taste like a combination of Braille and holy water.
We label them meticulously, inspect them under the microscope
on glass slides, diagram all their vessels and organs
with the help of a biology textbook.
Yesterday we stood on the Golden Gate Bridge and watched the ghosts
of 27 people jump to death from the railing, wishing we could save them.
Every so often one of their bodies would brush against ours,
like an apple falling from a tree, and we would feel a shudder of revulsion,
but also a kind of love, a longing sharper and more distinct than desire,
the kind of electric current that occurs between two boys kissing.
But what no one understands is that
you can’t coax someone back up from that railing
if they’ve already been down so many times they don’t know
what up feels like. When you read with the light on at night,
I crash my body against yours so hard I can feel all the layers of your cells
shifting, moving over mine like tectonic plates, coming to rest
against my heart. When I ask about the scars on your wrist
you say the cat did it, but the cat always does it, the cat’s going to keep
doing it, the cat will always do it. Now when you press your mouth
to my collarbone I prepare a new microscope slide out of habit,
unbundling my nerves, unsheathing them,
waiting, like all 27 ghosts teering on the edge of the bridge,
to disappear.