little better than an animal,

for I have no real access to your language.

Only words for ‘yes’ and ‘good’ and ‘please’

so that you must watch as I grunt and point

and smile.

But you are gracious, you bear the weight of

language for two—

I am made civilized by your tongue,

though it too soon tires of syllables

rare and strange.

Frequent pauses follow,

staccato moments full of hand gestures, glances,

and uncomfortable laughs.

And soon there is nothing left

for us, but to turn slowly,

to slip from our chairs and crawl onto elbows and knees.

To grow close to the earth as we try to be

together in our strangeness.

There, we find something

tucked between us.

Intimacy, like a cat, slides from that wordless space.

It arches and growls.

We coax her on with coos and purrs

until our hands form a bridge for her to walk across.

Our embrace making

corners for her to cuddle into.

Like her, we grow kittenish, and

free of language.

We plunge our hands into our hearts.

We set our tongues to other uses.

No lying left,

no parsing of syllables.

There is an honesty in our bodies,

as we learn to trust the way only animals can,

accepting the touch, the smile,

the warm sensation of that which exists

when we join.