Kindling

I trace the bias of your mouth
with the back of my palm
to the tip of my index finger.
It is not
the way a moth above us
hungers for energy, bangs on a shade,
nor the way it flutters small, it's body
starving a way through existence,
buzzing on life, just to breed.
It is not the way I learned
at a quarter to two,
some hours earlier,
that trees are bleached by Sun,
after dying, on an exposed site.
I'd thought that lightning did that.
And it is not the chit of a bird in a wood,
just to the left of your porchstand.
It is the way you exhale when I linger,
it's how your body quivers, electrified,
it's the pale space you make on my eyeline,
it's a song that emits from the throatbox
with every touch left upon your skin.