It’s Not the Body’s Fault 

but yours is where the ache resides, site of a thousand delicate  
harms—soft of a cheek on the soft of a cheek—and hers  
a door upon which you try and try not to knock. Yes,  
remembering hurts, though you won’t indict the jaw, skin  
of the wrist, belly or its button, little hollow where the tongue  
in your mind still dips, conjuring the ghost of a moan from  
the mouth you have ceased to kiss for good. You don’t blame  
the hands, not yours or hers, not the animal they made  
when they touched, all sinew and heat. Type specimen  
and endling. Precious, I’m saying, then extinct. The fault  
is not the shoulder’s, warm or cold. The back is not the culprit,  
even turned. Body is setting, not plot, whether burning or  
burned. It’s the farm you already bought, and now—field sown  
with salt and somehow blooming—you’ll have to live in it.