Rewrites are important in love poems

Her womanly anatomy is something more
than mere presence in this present world.
She is an epidermal graveyard of memory,
blemished with life and accidental sharpness,
by rubber bands, pencil lead, angry hands
and hands that share a roughness
of horseplay that gentled to foreplay.
Her spinal curvature is itself historical:
childish pranks and Jersey roller skates,
late night lamp reading through long waits
and longer curiosities.
Forgotten animosities sit mostly hidden in her eyes,
forgotten fear almost spills from her mouth,
even her ears were pierced to prove some adult status.

She lies reading, curled across my back
and over and under my legs.
She does not fully realize that I see secrets
beyond old lovers' thighs.
I see beyond, I see into her mother's want
and see the walls of the womb
from which she has come.
She is the jewel of my life,
the bit of string tied to my heart.