Punchline

a night in a fantasy

Source: Marek Piwnicki from Unsplash

your touch
turns me gracefully morose

your teeth
cradle glasses of milk

the shatter, the spatter
on the stained floorboards
never comes

i kiss your
immaculate cuticles, slumped
over my uneven shoulders

the valley of your
stomach has plenty of
remote curves and mounds

they quake and tremble
at each punchline

i convulse when you
stroke my hair and
contort in laughter

your mouth
cascades a singular
sturdy note

from your lips, bursts a
poem, two rolling
firm moors of flesh

mingle, split, unite

your tongue is
a sharp, whittled pen

once i sit up, you become
a sculptor, forming a new
continent in my shoulder blades

another fit of chortles
spills from you,
cackling into my neck

I ask you, “What is it?”
You shrug, smirk, “Sorry, I forgot the joke.”

And there, your tongue
transformed
into a river