That Arrow

The soap burns.  Lye leaves a milk
ghost, my breasts stung, chalked
in red, full of the blood you swore
 
you could taste.  It turned on you,
as I did.  A flush steeped across
the chest, streaked the throat.  Everything
 
showed on my skin, each stimuli
set and recorded.  When I left,
your body coiled with a blue branch,
 
the twisted vein enflamed.  The nurse
called it varicocele, such as she
had only seen on truckers, those who
 
drive for miles.  How far you must have
traveled in your sleep.  I remember
you shook before drifting, each limb
 
loosening with a low cry.  The first time
I thought you were dying.  You must
 
have thought I was dying, that redness
widening, following the faint tract
of hair where our stomachs met,
 
and parted, and met, that arrow leading
you down, then into me, then out.

— Alison Stine

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