Words.

Your mouth hung wide, jaw swung,
gently, a cradle for your tongue
and teeth. So many syllables
crowded in behind them.
Oh, but we knew that they were just sounds,
rollicking over the air as carefree as children
trilling and brushing their hairless
faces against one another. Like strangers.
No single word knew another.
They were just affectations,
an illustration of what truth could be,
if one were to concern oneself with truth.
Each stood in faithful assembly,
drawn up tenderly by that tongue,
which now sat in dutiful repose
in your cavernous mouth. Your prose
had taken form. Like another man,
like a separate limb, it occupied the room,
begged my belief, extended itself out to me,
used your eyes—those lashes,
those looks, like fingers, urging—
as if I could somehow give myself to him,
and become your lover by proxy.