National Poetry Month 30 Poems in 30 Days Challenge, Poem #20

from here

Breathing

Let's meet before sunset, when wind and night bite and streak orange. We'll watch fireflies flash over the sluggish length of the river, dying soundlessly in the swooping mouths of bats, and we'll both smell the coolness of water, notice how the half light hides our graying aging, remember other mouths at other rivers. We must not speak of this.

You may choose to lean against my shivering shoulder, inviting me to press my nose or my lips into your hard parted hair. I might toy absentmindedly with your braid, drawn too tight down the back of your neck and lying atop the bony ridge of vertebrae between your shoulder blades. I might count your bones through the cotton of your shirt, through your pale goose-pimpled skin, as I run one restless knuckle down and up your spine. I might lose count, because counting has never interested me at all.