How my true love and I lay without touching
–Leland Bardwell

How my true love and I lay without touching
How my hand journeyed to the drumlin of his hip
my pelvis aching
Just like two saints or priests or nuns
my true love and I lay without touching.

How I would long for the brush of a kiss
to travel my cheek or the cheek of my groin
my heart aching
But just like two saints or priests or nuns
My true love and I lay without touching.

Last night in my dreams I spoke with his wife
his true love who had left him surely as they lay without touching
my heart for her was aching
For like two saints or priests or nuns
the two loves once lay without touching

But the dream of her faded before concentrating
each to each in our innocent mutual hating
her hand aching
to blind me with bullets to prevent herself from pining
for a once love she longed for and lay without touching.

Now my true love lies in the mutton of madness
‘I was always troubled by sex,’ he says, with great sadness
his wife and I aching
in our cold single beds with many seas dividing
as we think of the years that we spent without touching.