I don’t know when the obsession began.

Perhaps two days into the start of school,
when he said hello to me for the
second time this year

and I realized that it’s not his mouth
or his eyes or even his hair.

Instead,
it’s his hands.

Long, pale, elegant things.
Wispy limbs that induce within me
the kind of longing that belongs
in a harlequin romance.

I’m not trying to be poetic,
but these hands, God, these hands.

They deserve a poem.
They deserve fifty.

The star extending outward
from the wrist bone,
empty bowls clenched around air,
oh, God.

Did I mention he plays the piano?
It would be too easy to say
“How I’d love for him to play me.”

I find myself jealous of the pianos
in the music hall, all three of them.

He can’t pass by them without touching them
and the sheer yearning on his face when he sees them
and how he steps around me if I’m closer to them
so that he can trail his fingers along the ivory keys,
play a glissando that ends on a high, clear C—

Oh, God, to be that piano.

To feel him love me: all seven octaves,
all eighty-eight keys.