My husband asks how I feel about sex,
says, I’ll go first, I’ve been turned on.

I’m thinking about women again.
Crepe myrtle in the middle of the street’s
slow turn to saturation in late summer.
Last night I dreamt I was in a theater with her
alone, our bodies turned to the screen and we
wouldn’t touch. I kept thinking, we could here,
in this dark, we could kiss until the lights go up.

We’re sitting on the kitchen floor.
I say, avoidant, say, Even when I touch myself,
my head separates from my body.

I’ve felt this before, I’ve felt this eternally.
Last summer a jellyfish stung me—
I’m always tuned to what might happen
beneath the surface, what’s coming for me
that I could never stop. I worry
when it’s beautiful. In the ocean,
when I touch him, the fear settles.
Bobbing three feet out in this impossible
clear green crystalline, I see my body,
and my blood goes saline, fingers curl in
fear, it’s not the waves, or the tow, the force,
it’s this small thing, the sting, the feeling
that we might have known.