The Skin Remembers  

I can drink sweet white wine or apricot brandy to forget,
and the forgetting is not that hard –
but the skin remembers

it’s dry, this skin where your tongue used to play
it remembers, I guess, and it still misses those days
and no amount of clothing, or under-moonlight naked swimming
or expensive perfume, or new-fallen snow, or scalding hot bath-water
will ever completely send you away

I can try to fool myself into thinking you are easily replaced
and the lie might last until morning –
but the skin remembers

© 2006 Hannah Oberlin