Blood Heat
For Clem
Blood heat – wrist in the water till it says so.
I sort your pills in their plastic week,
Monday to Sunday, one shaped like a moon,
towels, the flannel, the gown off the door.
You come down with one button
put through the wrong small door.
Six weeks ago I’d have fixed it without asking.
Now I ask first. You let me.
You say sorry for the scar, and I pass the soap
and take my time about it.
Sorry for what? As if you’d tracked mud in.
I signed for all of you. Whatever came back.
The flannel runs its old route
over the flat side before I call my hand home.
You put your hand on mine and hold it there.
We wash that side together, slow.
The water cools around us.
Your weight settles on my arm.
We don’t hurry it.
The afternoon goes nowhere.
Kneeling at the tub, sleeve past the elbow:
the seam, the pucker where the drain went,
the breast that stayed, the water warm on you.
I sit back on my heels. You see me do it.
Tonight I move back over from the spare side.
You lift the arm on the good side
and I come in under it,
careful, careful, then not.