I admit to pressing my ear 
to the bathroom door to discover
if you were touching yourself 

during your long shower, and 
in the uninformative rain-sound 
that answered back, longing lifted me 

into its steamy theater: but unlike the movies,
where one body joins the other
under the water, wet shoulder slipped 

against dry, I pressed my back 
to the wooden door and opened myself— 
I met you there alone, wherever you were.

Once, while you slept between shifts, 
I connected your smartwatch 
to my phone, watched your heart rise 

and fall from the living room. I admit to it:
the drug is the proximity and separation 
both. This way I practice remembering 

you. For love cannot edit the story 
as carefully as fear. When you emerged 
from the bathroom still damp, your skin raised 

where the water pinked you, you asked 
what have you been doing—behold 
your spouse stretched long on the sofa, stilled 

and dressed, holding open 
an unread book. I admit to it. I have loved you
publicly and I have loved you alone, and 

while the loves touch, they are not 
the same. I’ve been reading this book, 
I said. It’s about someone whose husband dies.

—winner of the Editors’ Prize in Poetry