That mark upon your back is finally fading
in the way our memory will,
of that night our lust wouldn't wait for bed
so laid us out upon the floor instead
where we worked up that scar ---
two tattered flags flying from your spine's mast,
a brand-burn secret in the small of your back.

I trace them now and feel the disturbance again.
The still waters of your skin broken, the volte engaging
as we make our marks like lovers who carve trees,
the equation of their names equalled by an arrow
that buckles under time but never leaves,
and so though changed, under the bark, the skin,
the loving scar remains.