_42. System

The body is a rich ground for poetry:
the beating heart,
the sympathetic nervous system
stretching into every crevice of your corpus.
I can tell when you’re nervous,
that heart beating and the muscles
around your throat tightening.
I’m sympathetic, love, as you are,
as rigid as your epinephrine made you
I can see your tenderness
as soft as a glass of water.
I can watch you stand by the
sea and know you, when you shrink
your dazzled pupils at
the many scattered pebbles of light
on the water’s surface,
your hands caught in a cry
just below your mouth.