Coming undone

The light goes out in your eyes and even
as you grab the front of my shirt and pull
me against you hard and hot there’s some-
thing in your look that reminds me of us

of us at age fourteen lying in the back of
a car moving cigarette smoke around in our
mouths and I turned my head toward you and
for one second you looked like a line drawing

a drawing of yourself by an artist not especially
skilled; I blinked and you were you-as-your-
self again, bone and blood and pain, not pencil; but
now you look sketchy twenty-two hours a day

every day you don’t fuck him, anyway, and I’m
starting to think maybe that’s a seam I see coming
undone in your eyes, a seam splitting and not a light
dimming, and I just want to smoke again

in the back of that car and beg you to touch me
and beg you to touch me because I can feel every milli-
metre between your skin and mine and all I want is
ten more seconds before that seam opens all the way and you’re gone.