salt

Sin-eater eat your sin
--dissolve it
as I lick the salt off your skin
and it burns, bitter
chalky ash of the seas
that have passed through you—your arms
have become the shores
of your desire

this is the only ablution waiting
how long did you walk
--with the asphalt melting below you
to watch the dry hills shimmer
in the heat, grass waving
in the still basin of the sky
--and I am waiting

we—have been washed clean
by our own tides, have tumbled
and spun among the waves rolling

across us—we have hung
atop the rollers—to grasp at
the sky—we
--have become strange and quiet
half-polished, unhallowed—rueful ghosts
with still-breathing bodies
--let me lick the salt from your skin