By Kathy Shaidle
Date: 28 June 2000

That body of yours

isn’t yours at all.
You’ve ribboned round so many others—
I know

not just because you told me so
with a juggler’s easy smile,
but also because
when The Other was me,

I felt all the others
who’d sighed in your arms
in your arms,
and their kisses kissed me
with their lips

(like spending one night
on a haunted house dare)

And even before 
that (one) night I knew:
so many others
(o no, not me)
so sure in their skins
but you

are ever so much more:
you hold, with love & barefaced grace,
those many others in yourself
just like your singing sister
holds a note.

"That body of yours!"
your sister sang out,
that day we all drove to the falls
(even before that one night)

and I tried not to look
(although not very hard)
at that body of yours
(and not mine)
 

I try not to look
at the pictures we took:

That dorky hat you always wear,
you raising those arms to the clouds.

That’s you climbing the rocks
as if into a bed;
crouching & eating
out there on the cliff
& wiping the crumbs off your shirt.

That’s you beckoning me to the edge.

And that’s me, alone,
(black sleeves & black shades)
—I’m turning my face
from your lens to the hills,
pretend I don’t hear you
calling my name.

That body of yours
was almost mine.
When you kiss another,
it’ll be me.