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Page 107

Love is, perhaps, overrated, but something about it,
not sex, exactly, but the giving it represents and the trust
that can follow thirst and thrust --
the shock of a first intimacy,

I mean the sheer intimacy of it, you know -- hard to believe
how much of ourselves we two 18-year-olds had invested
in mere nakedness! Anyway, when lying beside her,
naked, I realized I knew her thoughts, and she
(Oh, I want to say "you," not "she" -- there was no she,
no third person in the world -- a world into which that she
has vanished, but then densely populated with you,
only you, who are also I) -- she knew mine, and I noticed

I had become a space that included our bodies, a large space
(at the time, it seemed to me to be the room, because that
was the message from my body's eyes, to which, somehow,
distantly, as if through a tunnel, I was still connected,
but I recall, now, being aware -- intimately --
of buds on spring trees, cars, streams, ripples, small
water bugs skating) -- and you filled up the same space
I filled up, for there was no filling it, both of us
in everyone's space, filling up our own spaces

in the same place, more naked than naked,
both knowing it, making our little bodies
on the bed speak of it, a redundance that
charmed us, for isn't it fun to pretend
to have to talk, each saying, "Yes, I know,"
each knowing the other would say
the same?

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