— after Sharon Olds
It’s winter, which is when I wait, watch
you all layered and lovely, growing such a thick coat
down one leg and running up the other. We take turns
pressing our cold soles against each other’s
calves before sleep. I pull my pant leg up,
like a hitchhiker’s invitation, or more like unwinding
a wound to let it breathe and you can’t
help touching the edges, testing the sore
with gentle fingers, feeling the flesh
getting young again. And loving you is knowing summer
will shear your fur down to the smooth skin, and all
through those hot months, you will stick to me
and the rhythm of the ceiling fan won’t break up
our dance, which has that slower beat.
And it’s knowing that those months end.
That you will catch a shiver before we realize
it’s time to give up bare-legged sleeping,
and your thighs will explode into mine, and I’ll be
pricked ten thousand times, like my skin
is waking up after going numb, like I’ve been
laying with you, forgetting your other textures and how
the end of one thing is remembering what’s coming.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 5.
Ryan McCarty is a writer and a teacher living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. His writing has appeared recently in Coal City Review, Collateral, Door is a Jar, Hamilton Stone Review, One Art, Pinhole, Rattle: Poets Respond, and Trailer Park Quarterly.
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