Planting flags

He’s asleep on his back
like he got thrown there by a bar fight
with gravity.

I study his face the way
some people study maps
when they’ve got nothing left to lose.

Those lines…
not the cute ones you call “laugh lines”
at brunch with your clean friends…
these are the hard roads.
The kind that don’t lead out of town
so much as deeper into it.

And the pits,
little dents in the skin,
like the earth took a thumb
and pressed down
to remind him
he’s not marble,
he’s not a statue,
he’s just a man
who kept showing up.

His body is all river-work…
rower shoulders,
the long pull of him,
back like a plank that learned hunger,
arms that look built
for dragging a boat
through bad weather
and worse decisions.

When I touch him
I don’t think “beautiful.”
I think: summit.

Not the postcard kind.
The kind you reach
with your lungs on fire
and your knees bargaining
with God,
and the sky acting
like it never heard of mercy.

I want to plant flags on him.
Small, colorful, private flags.
Not for the world.
For the quiet.
For the evidence.

A flag at the deep crease above his chin…
a carved-in place
where words have been swallowed,
where stubbornness lives…
“I was here.”

A flag at the corner of his mouth
where the cigarette years still live,
even if he quit…
“I was here.”

One at the slope of his throat
where his voice climbs out of him
when he reads to me,
slow enough to stay.

One at each collarbone,
those sharp ridges
like the start of a mountain range.

One on the sternum..
with its crisp, red hair,
bristled like dry grass
on high ground…
flat stone under it,
where my palm fits
like it’s always known the route.

And lower,
the hard planes of his stomach,
softened by being held,
the ropey seams of muscle below
that say discipline
the way a bruise says truth.

Then my favorite landmark…
not the heroic ones,
not the ones you brag about…
the small, ridiculous truth of him:

the skin tag on his left side,
between armpit and hipbone,
a little stubborn comma
in the sentence of his body.

I put my mouth there
like I’m signing something.
Like I’m leaving ink
where nobody else thinks to look.

I keep marking him
in my head,
staking claim without paperwork,
without vows,
without the stupid ceremony
people use to make desire
look respectable.

Because this is how I love:
not clean,
not holy,
but clear.

I want him to wake up
and carry me with him
like a faint scratch
under the skin…
not enough to hurt,
just enough
to remember.

The last flag
goes where all the climbing ends.
Not his mouth.
Not the places men think
are the prize.

His heart.

That stubborn,
beating little room
that keeps letting me in
even after the furniture’s been broken.

I press my ear there
and it thuds
like a door
someone keeps reopening.

I plant the final flag
and don’t say it out loud,
because it sounds too much
like prayer…

but it’s simpler than that:

“I was here.”
“I am here.”
“Put me in the beating and don’t let me out.”