I want you to come to me
and peel back my hair.
The sweaty matted, silky soft
day and night and day.

Away with the words
and leave me your breaths instead —
Quiet, basic, streaming
in the language I was born to speak
and have not spoken ever.

But of course the words come
Come come come —
Oblique, threadbare.
Among them I am a distant ghost
with a fading voice.
Away, smaller, away
in your sidelong glance.