When our hips lock and our arms move like little fronds of sweetgrass,

sliding against each other with the speed of our breath,

I know that this will end a certain way.

When I lean back against you and for a moment it is all just body language, it’s just the rez dogs barking in the driveway keeping us awake, it’s just the drinks we had, it’s nothing — still,

I know that there is something you want from me, 

and I can’t help but feel that I owe it to you, for the looks, the kisses, the hand that you held while we walked, for the gentleness I know you practice for all your lovers.

But if you could pretend for a moment that there was nothing beyond eyes and skin and hair,

Would you do that for me?

Would you kiss me like this is all there is for us?

Kiss me like you could find no further way to know me, to speak my languages like I do yours, to make the kind of music that puts a little jump in my heart, gets my blood running quick,

rushing across muscles and bones, across sinew and arteries. Kiss me like the apparitions that whistle to you from the trees, luring you in. Kiss me like the way you saw in that old western movie with the pretty Indian girl and the cowboy who held her, gently, by the side of her neck, like he could kill her to save her from what would come after.

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If I could love you with no organs I’d find God in the corners of your eyes, where

pink flesh and white tissue puddle together, milky, like constellations or galaxies,

and the music you’ve left on while we tangled our limbs is skipping, over and over, 

singing some old Apache love song, or Keith Secola or Randy Wood,

And when you get up to flip the disc I’d watch the ripple of your brown back, where the mountains you grew up on meet the lake I learned to be human in, 

where the lily pads would stain my skin in the same spots

that you kiss so softly, little nibbles and bites that err on a special kind of violence.

I’d watch the taper of your hair where it dips into valleys, where you’re running down the side of a hill, and you’re a Power Ranger, and your shii’ma’ is yelling for you to come home because dinner is ready, and when you’re there the steam is rising to your nose and you feel God at that kitchen counter, you feel God in the warm light, you feel God in that innocence you never knew you’d lose.

The music plays again and when you come back to replant yourself over the expanse of my body, there is no exchange. There’s no secret. We just want to touch.

You’d tuck a hair behind my red ear and you’d say ‘Pretty girl I know you’re a January baby, but I look at you and all I see is July. All I see is the sun.’

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If I could love you with no organs I’d feel you in the mornings, when sex is a memory I can forget, 

and the sheets have that lingering heat left behind by human touch.

I’d find the edges in the mattress where the contours of your body have left little stories, 

and I’d see

the time you learned to dance grass-style, the first broken bone in your body, your darkest secret, 

the girls and boys you looked in the eyes and called  

baby, love, honey, or slut.

I’d see your first kiss, the one you shared on a carousel after a powwow back in high school, when you spun so fast your eyes lost track of the lips and the colors and the feel of the plastic horse 

beneath your legs.

When something inside you was exploding like Christmas, 

because nothing had ever been so soft, and no one had ever felt you that way.

You couldn’t believe you ever lived without it, 

and you couldn’t believe love was ever a crime 

when all any of those native kids before us had ever done was 

touch and touch and touch and touch and touch

looking for a pulse that beated like theirs, looking for that rhythm of a drum.

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If I could love you with no organs I’d boil you down in a silver spoon

and stick you into the supple skin of my arm, where it bends and goes tender, little blue veins criss-crossing over the spot you held softly the night I tried to leave. When

the sun was dying like the end of the world over the edges of the bald cypress

and I thought that if I allowed myself the rush of your turbulence any longer, I’d shatter,

little pieces of me covering the grizzly bear-themed bathroom you’d wanted as a kid

and never bothered to change.

That night you found me crumpled on the tiles, and

like a guilty kind of addict who keeps needing more, you breathed it into me, 

mouth to mouth,

got me with this drug, this need, this hope that all of this can go on without you inside of me,

that all of this can go on with my clothes still on,

that all of this can go on without the collateral pain it causes me to be vulnerable over and over 

‘til you’re satisfied and my hips are black and blue like that beading you wear on your neck.

I want to be left with hips unmarked by it, I want the bathroom to be for long showers only, I want the bedroom only for holding each other through the mornings, 

I want you only for you, for that smile you get when something is so funny all you can do is find my eyes, like confirmation hovering across from you in the bench seat of a pickup truck.

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Please, love me with no organs, no end goal, no sex,

so when your hands touch me,

cupping me like cold water, 

I can ask you,

‘Do you want to keep going?’ 

and I’ll wait anxiously for those age-old words, 

for the rough hands that will pull me apart piece by piece, 

Slow-cooked like elk shoulder, smothered in sheets and blankets 

til I’m tender and dripping and there is no paper plate to catch my excess.

I’ll smile, finally, when for the first time you answer

‘Baby, love, honey, what more could we ever do?’