Waking Up Single

   by Kathryn Jacobs

	
The memory tickles, spoken to your skin,
except the lips are missing. Blocking, but
your skin remembers him: face-down, head first,
nose thrusting – twitching lips vibrating in
the dent of tucked-in muscle. Eyes squeezed shut,
your hand moves up as usual to grip
his own peculiar, gently bulging skull –

and catches nothing but your collar-bone;
an empty groping. Feeling no curved skull,
no short hair bristling – nothing but his ghost
and naked shoulder (yours). You punctured it:
no face, no forehead pressing, and no sound
but one scared whisper running down your ribs,
your leg, your ankle; one last twitch, and gone,
buried in blanket and the early dawn.