“Forget about washing your face”
he said,
“And come to bed.”
He was holding my face in his hands.
I was thinking,
now we were
alone,
“Eight hours on the plane,
and I must look like hell;
he hasn’t seen me in four months;
my mouth is a lint filled dryer
and if I throw my arms around his neck
he’ll smell thirty weeks of tears,
he’ll smell my fear, my craving for him,
and that
one-way ticket bringing me
like a homesick angel
to Heathrow today?
It will be
a joke.”
His voice was husky when he said again
“Come to bed”
but this time
he rubbed his cheek against my
neck when he said it.
I felt the heat of his breath, smelled his
worry, tasted his moist, afraid mouth,
and so
stinking and grinning and sweating
we fell, wrapped together like ribbons
untied
into Boxing Day.
