The trophies I have of you are not written
in photographs or notes.
Not in tape recordings or sound bites,
and our movie is about a German serial killer
with a penchant for whistling.
But I've been a memory thief for quite some time now,
and I want every sense of you seared into my temporal lobe.

Your eyes after you've been crying
are gleaming malachite cobblestones
in the gray downpour.
You don't show teeth when you really smile,
your lips pink as sunrise barely part.
Sweat at your temple curls dark your hair,
and I tilt your chin up for a feather's kiss.

I swallow down the earthquake sounds you make,
a laugh and a growl and a moan
like a landslide in your white throat.
I draw your kiss with my teeth like a bee sting,
good and painful.

I breathe your air
like the atmosphere of a different place,
stepping out of a plane and
“this is Africa, this is somewhere else.”
Salt and sweet and hot
like foods never tasted,
wine never drunk, alien,
you smell like exploring a new planet, a new star.

You sparkle, effervesce,
a shock through my teeth like purple cocktails,
electric buzz over my skin,
pain and strange sherbet powder static on a tongue.
A blue lightning jolt that rewires me to you,
sent through synapses, every one,
branding you to my tongue.

My palms and fingers and nails
know you.
I learn you, your movements
and shivers and luminescent shudders,
the width of a joint in teeth, the scrape of callous
or soft of hair on scalp,
burning pathways through my brain.
YOU.