Learning a Foreign Language
together
we sheltered
from the rain
and you taught me
the word for skin.
I pretended not to know
so I could study
the movement
of your mouth,
the way your teeth invite
the air in
and moisture gathers as dew
at the end of sentences.
that evening
when you tried to wash
my body,
I knew how to say
hand but I asked you
anyway.
since then, I learned
that krew means blood;
I remember when ours
got thicker
that same night,
as the lights went out
and your tongue
cascaded down
the precipice of my neck.
Luís Costa (he/they) is the author of Two Dying Lovers Holding a Cat (Fourteen Poems). His poems are available or forthcoming in Queerlings, Stone of Madness, Roi Fainéant, Visual Verse, Boats Against The Current, Anthropocene, the anthology He/She/They/Us (Pan Macmillan), and elsewhere. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths and lives in London, but you can find him on social media @captainiberia.
The Marbled Sigh 