“the answer is always in the body”
— heard in passing; a line from a TV crime show

1.
licked and prodded,
it still refuses to give up
a secret

2.
in the dark, lit blue,
misted with laden rain,
our signatures revealed
as clouds on our still skin

3.
the mottled shapes
of shared blood can be read
as a novel: here the plot
is thick, here thicker;
here is a second theme;
here, the pooling, the co-mingling,
so confusing to the outsider

though we understand
what has happened here

4.
cooling happens
at a predictable rate
once all factors are accounted for
so something unknown to science
must be holding all this heat

5.
the answers
are always in the body

the body is always
asking