Fire escape out the back of the heart, running –

love like an apartment building, full of other people’s lives and their noisy sex,

muffled tears, fortunate laughter. By any account, nothing goes together just

as the box describes, and she is still lighting a cigarette on the corner,

my hand shading the lighter flame from the wind. Even as I reach to stroke

your waist in passing – between us it’s the incidental touching

adds up to making love,

over long stretches of absence and short

coincidences of desire – we call it playing, or “just friends” (as if friends

were less than precious) but I say it is neither of those. You and I write

poetry together, without pen or paper. You

talk to my flesh with your hands,

I am covered in your words and the bruises your voice leaves. The poem

belongs to us, yet there is no “us” – only you – balanced far above

a desert of past sorrow, past joy – hulking and gorgeous

structures on the horizon ready to burn – your happiness

now forged stronger, tender and whiplike, your eyes looking in – and I –

thin between memories like flattened roses in a book, still wondering which

moment is the doorway

through which I walk out of time. My body loves ideas

more than men, or that is to say, men from a distance –

but an idea will not bind my wrists

in the dark, will not press me down until I stop

struggling – give in, craves that firm hand.