Otter

Your skin is made of light,
Your eyes glow like the sun seen through
a glass of ale, in sleepy summers
ten thousand years ago, before MRI's,
before mortgages, before hesitation.

Your ribs settle into my palms,
flexible as a girl's. You twist and laugh
and nuzzle like an otter.

Death tried to hold you, but he got greedy:
he pulled too hard and lost his grip, and
suddenly
you were out of his hands.

We are marked where he seized us.
We are burnt, fragile, stretched out of shape
like a wet-dog sweater worn in the rain
by an obese cousin;
and of course
Death gets us in the end. But not yet.
Not now.
When you kiss me
you stick your tongue out at him.