These are things we are never taught about anatomy:
my love for you is the thing that will endure –
that will fossilize and be excavated
with other 21st-century Americans
when anthropologists will have the technology to know
that the bones of poets
look different.
Without you, the rest of me
will waste away (such a waste).
My love for you will become more evident –
where hips and clavicles jut,
angles become harsh,
and ribs lend themselves so easily to counting.
Perhaps then you will no longer question.
Perhaps then you will see that flesh can change,
that my skin and my muscles –
the motion of me –
are subject to time and will
and your hands (oh, your hands).
Can you come to an agreement
with the way my hair grows,
my crooked smile, my scars?
These are things that are willing to negotiate.
But there is no bargaining with my bones.
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