Zachary Scalzo

for JB, after

“How am I going to peel my skin off in the morning
if I don’t marinate it in night sweat first?”

I have my moments of transparency,
when my cheeks strike like a match
when we scry out a future or two in

a wink, in your teeth as they catch on
the Z in my name, in a palm, in the halves
of gummy worms, in the oil-slicked sheets

only half on your bed, in your fingers,
your nails as they pull as they might skin
a clementine or graze over some other

handfruit, when your fingers pick off the
brown tendrils of ivy that drip from the pot
on the stool by the balcony, it’s thick, you say,

too, when it’s humid, when I pad a curved finger
past the insides of thighs, when my tongue constellates
down the sweat of your skin, when I circle the thumbprint

of hair on your stomach with my left index
finger as you sleep with your back to my
chest, when I hold in my breath to your

mechanical hum, as we rise and we
fall, when I sit in a Starbucks in a six
stoplight town and trace over each line

in a thin ballpoint pen on a form for a
visa to study abroad as the screen of my
phone shines the black of your name.

There’s something that’s soothing in gripping
a pen, in the arcs of my fingers, white-tipped
and stained blue in the dragging of birth

dates and ages and names I have known,
in my laying in bed, in my thumb hitting Send:
“We can both stop pretending there’s only

one reason that I have to text.” There’s
something that’s soothing in knowing I
blush. There’s something that’s soothing

in knowing my name.