S.B. Merrow: Craving

What I want is just one chance to be 
inside your life. Not to share 
the same supper, to learn the good news 
before your favorite sister—and I don’t mean 
the kind of understanding that comes after 
lovers decide to scuttle their fear, 
lie together and find in time the meaning 
of art, or children, though that will be good 
enough—working it all out in the morning
over two bowls of cereal dotted with blueberries,     
fine dark stars in a milky cosmos, 
one for almost every dip of the spoon.  
I'm talking about a night we spend 
 
in the same body on the same smooth stones 
on the bottom of the dry river 
when a storm comes. Our two ears wake 
to the sound of rushing water, 
hearing as in a duet the same whoosh before 
we are seized by the waist and 
for the first time my skin is your skin, 
submerged and invisible, and
we are dragged by the legs, scraping our back, 
our mouth full of sand, my mind 
yours in its urge to swim. It would happen 
fast, like magic, though I’m not sure 
I’d grasp, even then, what it is to be you.

Copyright 2020 S.B. Merrow. A version of this poem was published in Nimrod International Journal in 2018.