Amber burke

We rise from the earth toward each other, aching with desire. What is allowed? The tentativeness of first touches. Tell me what you want. I take your hand and place it. My young body. Your young body. The dew on us gleaming. Inviting, teasing. The plushness that forgives clumsiness. Your mouth, your teeth; my neck, my ears. Nothing but this, for years and years. We surprise each other. You feel so good. Bodies solid now, sturdier now. Strong and certain and direct. That hurts, you finally told me. Don’t kiss me there anymore; I don’t like it anymore. Coarser, rough sometimes, with everyone besides each other. We are more of this earth than we were, etched by its waters, its gravity, its sun, its time. You pick me up; my hair drapes over your arm into the air. When did your hair go gray? We are thinner, skins so thin. Better to feel everything, my dear. Come for me, darling. Don’t I always? Don’t I still? Eyes withdrawing, lanterns gone farther into caves. You’re in there. I know it’s you. I can still see you. I’m going toward you; I’m trying to catch up. Don’t stop, I beg, and you don’t, not until we lift and arch. Our bodies, tired, withdraw. We’ve whitened. The skeletons in us announce themselves. It’s getting harder to hear every voice but yours. At a certain distance, you blur, and the saddest thing is not being able to see you perfectly, in bed next to me. I’m sorry. Why do you always say you’re sorry, like it could have been better than it was? It could have been. It couldn’t have. The tenderness when it’s over: my head, your chest; my ear, your heart. Breath rattles. Blood stills. Everything stops. A floorboard creaks. Curtains blow the way they do in empty rooms. Our bed sinks into the earth.

Amber Burke graduated from Yale and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She teaches writing and yoga at UNM-Taos. Her work has been published in magazines including The Sun, X-R-A-Y, Michigan Quarterly Review, Raleigh Review, Superstition Review, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Quarterly West, and Flyway Journal. Yoga International has published over 100 of her articles and the ebook she co-authored, Yoga for Common Conditions. Check out some of her work here.

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