You’ll find me stripping to my briefs
& slipping inside, feeling the satin cool
the backs of my thighs.
Go ahead, lower the lid—
pin darkness on top of me,
its breath hot on my face—
an unlit cigarette on my lips
for what comes after.
I’ve formed this habit;
now leave me to tend to it.
I’ll need some privacy
to explore this shape,
to trace my fingers down this spine,
to suck shuttering breath.

Once, a pair of feral cats
unzipped the stillness of night
with thrashes of ecstatic agony.
From the rhododendron,
yowls fevered the summer air
through a fury of hissing—
claws swiped, teeth tore.
They could’ve been fucking.
I decided that night:
nothing greets us after death.
Blood soaks, skin splits,
sinew glistens. Underneath,
our flesh is flesh.

Ed Doerr is a teacher and the author of 'Sautéing Spinach With My Aunt' (Desert Willow Press, 2018). He was selected as a featured poet for Cathexis Northwest Press. Other words can be found in or forthcoming from Water/Stone Review, Hippocampus Magazine, One Teen Story, Perhappened, Parentheses Journal, Flypaper Lit, High Shelf Press, Lighthouse Weekly, & more. Readers can follow him on Twitter (@EdDoerrWrites) and visit his website (eddoerr.com).