tender (take two)

i.
beauty has black hair.

beauty has black hair and a dark smile.

beauty has black hair, a dark smile,
full lips, a fleshed-out face, and
a cartilage piercing in her left ear.

beauty has hair, smile, lips, face, and piercing,
and caramel skin,
and perky little Hershey's Kiss
nipples.

ii.
hair, smile, lips, and face
talk to you when you're all
alone, and other times they
surround you in silence.

cartilage, skin, piercing, and nipples
notice your t-shirt
but do not speak, only
awaiting.

iii.
you want beauty:
you want hair,
smile,
lips,
nose, ears, eyes, cheeks,
you want cartilage between your teeth,
you want to taste that caramel,
to part those lips,
you want those kisses pressing down
into your mouth,
you want it so much you can almost taste the
coppery caramel burning a blessed hole
through your tongue, those legs pressed
together around your cheeks:

you want
beauty, you want it, the singular and
the plural, the parts and the whole,
every inch of it, every ounce of it.