Like they said in art history, it isn’t the object we see, it’s the light. Impressionism and calotypes. Try to paint the pitcher using only orange, blue, white. Somehow all the hours in dark rooms staring at slides taking notes on stacks of index cards led me to you. Up close everything is geometry: giraffe spots, turtle shell segments, the pattern of mud as it dries ‘til it cracks, the intersection of soap bubbles. Your skin is as intimate to me as the skin of an orange. And as mysterious. Your skin distant as the skin of the sea. You with your ridges, rills, dimples, reaches, legions of pores. How did you ever land in my bed? We chased light as long as we could. Touched as the jet lifted off. Long gleam of beach, lace waves spun away like the ground under a carnival ride. Breathless. Shine of a seed. You asked what those leaf things children stick on their noses are called. I said helicopters. Winged seeds. You noted the freakish drive of all things to reproduce. On Maui the divemaster zipped my breasts into neoprene. My favorite thing was watching you come out of the water. I could pick you out of a crowd. Hibiscus petals under my burned feet. Thorns hidden in sand. My eyes poured so full of light I had to close them.