From "Accordion Breathing and Dancing"back to menu The CityAIDS Education, Seventh GradeBath Bath Through the hot water, your belly, your lovely, fat, floating, abused belly, flesh you stick with daily needles which bruises, sometimes, into purple blossom. Desire branches there teeth-first, taking us both. Love, to describe you perhaps I should start with your feet, scaly and nerveless, toenails gone, flesh crusted-over in their place. Under your skin the kidneys bloat, helpless to let go the long, clean, clear streams of urine, and when you walk a block, or up a flight of stairs, your arteries choke shut and airless, panting on their tracks - how far away it seems, that castle, your struggling heart. Sometimes you look to me like an old woman, despairing and fat. Still, your breasts float toward me, hot, wet, buoyant moons I can hold in my two hands, and still, when we gather each other, rolling and sliding into sudden, holy want, the body says Revere me, and I do.