Kneeling in a basement, I was gullet
to a man, tumescence to the other
prone before me. Strangers all, we touched
with tender, hard attention
like children learning braille. I could hear
transit aboveground, ordinary people,
construction of the ordinary world
I sometimes belong to. I thought of you
asleep—how, watching you, I can only
muster terror, as though I were a serpent
who loves by withholding its venom,
as though the length of me were appetite,
and my skin the thing I couldn’t finish
leaving behind.