I'm looking at the intersection
of thigh and cloth,
oh at you,
where, caught in sunlight,
fabric adorns you.

Muscles shifting
beneath skin, tendons
maxed out at their task -
you're only scything
the field's fallow grass

down to stubble
but I grow my fingernails long
so they may graze you
and I paint them pink
to glow against your tan -

thigh to kneecap
to the calf's demarcation.
Who knows why
we love each other this way?
Your shout of laughter,

it arcs to me
across the hillside
where I weed away chicory,
other riffs of green
and the stinging

nettle, its rosary of pain.
I press it against my palm
and cross over to you,
bearing a stigmata,
red's rising tide.