Summer

If the sand-soaked summer sweat of your skin
Stays here in the sheets
Are you gone again?
Is this lingering thing mingled clinging to my fingers
Your shade
Left to haunt me?
I can smell you
In a dazed haze of the depraved to drive me crazy
Now you're gone.
If I'm alone
Does touching take me toward you --
Is it your hand or mine? --
When this scent of you is sipped like wet wisps of white wine?

- Jen 08-1996