loaned/purloined blue t-shirt of mine

loaned/purloined blue t-shirt of mine

clutched by my love’s left hand in a sent selfie,

not just a jim scent swatch squeezed like a sponge

under jeni’s nose — that visage connoisseur’s fixture below which

my kisses whirlpoolingly sink in not often enough —

but also a perfect way to accessorize those beautiful blue eyes,

which gaze at me off the phone screen page playfully and suggestively,

as if to say, reading my mind about the pairing above:

“loan” sounds like “groan”

and a pussy’s happy sound and “loin”

are adjoined in the next word with the tacit addition of “fur”

and the alveolar plosive phoneme that ends each verb

requires the tongue to tap on the roof of the mouth twice,

echoing the cadence jeni makes when she plucks

the clutched t-shirt strings of my stolen heart —

could I ever want any less to get back an item of my clothing,

when to possess it again would mean losing

these and innumerable other wonderful associations?

what’s freely given yet also paradoxically taken

is the deep frisson we call feeling mutually in love.