RWP/Day 4/Inside Out

Prompt: Write a poem that illustrates your idea of inside out.

Inside Out

"Your night gown is inside out," you said.
I looked. Laughed.
It wasn't that my senses were dulled, not at all.

The way you prop your barely-gray head on your elbow
like we're sixteen, new to this, wondering,
amazed at how good the trace of a finger
from neck to torso feels.
You lick your lips and I think you have
a sense of adventure
that thrills me, and I want to run through
all the verbs in the entire OED with you, plus invent
an adjective or two.
Your eyebrows flare up a bit
where they come together at the brow and there are
some stray hairs here and there. They
mirror the wildness that underlies your more obvious
control and clear thinking.
Yes, I see the scar on your lips,
and also their thinness, their mischievous shape,
their color of sea shell bellies. A close look at those lips
causes the hair on my forearms to quiver.
That dimple hangs like a spotlight
over your smile. Your eyes, lover-boy lashes,
irises like mandalas whose patterns wash me with joy.
Your jaw says I love you before your lips
have emitted a sound, the way you set it with intention.
Your forehead is where you carry your burdens
with such consideration. I admire you for that,
and think this too is wonderfully rare. I am drawn
to kiss the soft flesh above your brow, again and again.
How better to tell you?
Lay down your burdens, baby,
come into my arms, take what you will
from that sack of care and hold it up to the light,
so I might see and nod to you what I understand.

We had made love.
"So new," you moaned.
I felt, as Emily Dickinson said of poetry,
as if the top of my head had been taken off.

"Your night gown is inside out," you said.
I looked. You were right; it was.
I laughed, then went back to my studies:
your nose...
the space around your eyes...