~ “a fiercer life” ~

and here the story ceases to belong to us, instead we belong to it – our bodies

diverging, space stretched wide, every direction going towards

away from. Fingers interlacing fingers – the last of

an embrace, no matter how lasting becomes

an absence she wears against her skin, shaped like the small of

darkness he made with the flat of his hand, calling as one might

a cat – to leap warmly. (Want) firm desire – restrained

and welcomed in that bare gesture, wordless greeting (knowing)

where we may see ourselves reflected, in frailty, still curious, stumbling

artlessly, in love with the ground, with our bruises, green blush

spread on bone. On the way back to the conversation of light

on the retina, burning words into

until our pupils are breathing hard, flushed, my eyes so

full of your colors we see

nothing else. (ah, there’s the slip into first person – confessing,

every poem tells hours

in the same story, always there is you and I, always longing,

just wearing different faces). This quiet converging

everywhere, caught in sight’s thin cries – after his tears

ran down her lips, words too slow to escape

blinking, a glass door opening and closing in the rain.