First Night

She was on her knees straddling him,
her loose hair cresting over his chest.
It felt like he’d always crooned
slightly off key in her ear,
as he nuzzled the nape
of her neck, examined the creases
in her palm, rapt
as if she were the pony
he’d begged for each Christmas as a boy.
He ran his calloused thumb
across her lips and she suckled it,
his knuckle salty, then a little sweet.

His plush thighs pillowed hers.
She draped the sheets
over their heads, his musk
like forest loam, his hands at home
steering her hips.
Together, the shattering.
She was unabashed by the animal
sounds she’d made
and when he said, I love you,
his voice rumbling
as if up from an underground cave,
(that phrase her mother dared not utter,
all, she’d needed to hear as a child)
she felt it resound and swell, saturating
her every thirsting cell.