By Maria King

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a lesson on anatomy, taught by two special people

can we see
eye to eye?
run hand in hand?
have a heart to heart?
take your index and thumb
and pinch my left eye open
and take my contact out
before i kiss you goodnight;
and when i’m curled up under your duvet,
the white one with the little pink flowers,
wake me up from the dream i’m having
because i’d rather the guarantee
of seeing you face to face
than the risk of not seeing you
in my sleep

when it’s so cold out
that i can’t feel my ears
can i run back inside
to borrow your fuzzy black uggs?
will you step out with me
and cup my face
with your warm gloved fingers
and slip your kitty-kat earmuffs
over my head?
and when we’re carrying brown bags
of food back home
and your lips are blue
from the icy wind
i’ll cover them with mine
and the blizzard will watch us in envy
while we slowly thaw together,
staying lip to lip

so when we plod to the house, 
side by side
and we’re welcomed home
by the radio on low
we’ll throw off our coats and drop our bags
and we’ll fall to the floor.
on that navy rug,
we’ll lay spine to spine
and you’ll say very quietly
that if you could choose
your next life
you’d pick this one
every time.
and we’ll flip ourselves over, in sync,
so we’re lying brain to brain
and i’ll close my eyes
and you’ll let me sleep
because you know that you’ll meet me
wherever i go
and in our dream
we’re running arm in arm
under a black sky
down, down, down
an emerald hill
and when you stop
to give me a hug
and i clutch my arms
around your waist
we can be together,
breathing,
lung to lung

Process

I thought hard about the warmth attached to having a heart-to-heart with someone you love. I wanted to convey other feelings of closeness that two people experience in their everyday moments together. I wrote as many phrases like “eye to eye” and “hand in hand” and “face to face” and “lung to lung” as I could think of, and picked the ones that seemed to spark the most warmth.