The Shower (You Are Never Really Alone, Are You?) Poem by Alexander Frost

She shall sing the song of my arrival
Like an old sea shanty as she showers
And I am left alone to contemplate
The mysterious nature of her room:
The thread count of the blue cotton bedsheets
Why falling water, whether from faucets
Or the clouds on high, reminds me of rain
But I hear the handles begin to turn
I am stirred from my evening reverie
Listening for each stray drip as it drops
Drainwards from the top of the shower head

Your form is still faint and fragmentary
As you take two steps across the threshold
The steam rises and billowing above
The vague outlines of your bare arms and face
Follows in your wake like a graveyard ghost

Now you stand disconsolately before
The cold, dead stare of your own reflection
In the impartial glare of the looking glass
You gaze through the mirror towards your epitaph:
Perhaps ‘Here Stands the Fairest of Them All’
You turn around to ask my opinion
As if you did not possess the foresight
To finger my stops when I move to speak
To pull from me the words you long to hear
As if I would not say them anyway
But we both know before they leave my lips:
‘You look wonderful with your towel and robe
Your eyes are twinkling like two falling stars
But perhaps you would look better without’

Your hair hangs bright-brown like sycamore boughs
Concealing your chest like a waterfall
Behind whose curtain the buds of your breasts
Rooted beneath the damp soil of your skin
Have bloomed from the bulb of your beating heart

Rouged to red by the birthing doctor’s hand
Something of your skin relies on fever
A flush creeps across your cheeks when we touch
Lip-prints linger upon your still-wet skin
In all of the places I have kissed you

I cup your breasts from behind like a thief
Or a schoolboy afraid to meet your gaze
Still embarrassed by his own nudity
Blushing for the sake of both our bodies
(At least for now as the lights are left on)
In the dark I develop my senses
Letting the tips of my fingers tip-toe
Down each vertebrae of your naked back
Like each is a step on a walking path
I fit your body like a puzzle piece
Like a hand slides into its winter glove
Let our tongues twist like two sleeping serpents
Hidden away from the dry heat of day
Buried below the depths of desert sand

After the eagerness has abated
Sleep rolls over you like a gentle tide
As your breath begins to slow and settle
Into the tender cadence of a snore
You dream something deeper than my madness

I leave a note where you’re sure to find it
In the breast pocket of your suit jacket
So at least you know that I think of you
Each and every time you go away
Whether for the few moments when you bathe
Or for the eight hours of the working day
(‘You are never really alone, are you? ’)