I imagine kissing the baldness behind your ear
And the veins that line your scalp.
They flow cream, irritated with me and fuzzed with returning growth.
These branching waterways, I'm sure they pulse angry and tense,
The fragile bleeding velvet of spring antlers,
The veins that line your scalp.

I rarely witness you sleeping.
You are feminine-thin and I've cupped your shivering ribs
Between the padded undersides of my knuckles,
But I imagine waking up next to you and watching the harshness of your skin,
The rises, falls, dips, the sickly ripples I imagine
Running down the center of your shivering ribs.

And you don't know what to think of me.
I am a mixture of predictable and unpredictable,
Of weak and fragile, need and never pleased.

Oh Liebling, I love you burning intense,
But don't tell. I don't think I know me the way I know the quiver of your voice.
I want for very little, but who's to say?
Burning intense, the sickly ripple of your chest.

I want to be gentle but I want to choke you dry,
To drag my peeling, broken nails across the scarred bits of your skin,
The cat-paw soft deposits of my fingertips,
They can imagine pulling half-restrained against the wrinkled hemlines
where your spine curves away,
Choking you dry.

Teethmarks, no.
The strain of tendons against the quiet, hungry, desperate force,
Against the hollow dip that swells vulnerable between the bones of your jaw,
Pulling at your lips and pausing,
Pausing.
The tips of my nose against the break of your teeth through your cheek.
Pausing.
And I relax.

I imagine hiding my face against the heartbeat of your neck.
Tracing the veins that line your scalp,
Don't be angry with me.
Tracing the hollow of your shivering ribs,
Keep me company.
Tracing the sickly ripples, the harshness of your skin,
I'm sorry.
Seriously. I didn't mean to.
Kissing the baldness behind your ear, burning intense.

The way I choke you dry.