Draft


Once on the page, you’re slippery like soap
that leaps from grasping hands
		         and lands
already scrambling toward the drain.

Perhaps the pen is to blame,
too blunt to trace the detail of your frame.

My fingers know your landscape like a trail
				        and sail
across the swells of shoulder blades and knees
like cutters slip through slowly rising seas,

no more a chance that they might lose their way
in inky night than in a glaring day.

I know the scratchy brushes of your cheek
			                  and seek 
to feel them in the dark so I can rest
my hands against your face, my face against your chest

and feel you rise and fall beneath my breast
like tidal pools that ebb and fill with every trough and crest.

So there should be no simpler thing to trace
from memory onto page than your own face

until I lift the pen to sketch a curve
			 and swerve
and make your nose too thin, your jaw too set,
your eyes so blank and hard I’m sure we’ve never met

and every line I try to follow through
becomes the perfect shape for anyone but you.



Ali Fischer