the color travels from one

shade to another. I want you to follow me back to the place

I would not have cared, let go

your leaving, as though we are

wishing ourselves away. This is serious, she says,

half-joking – the tree line cut by eyes

pass quickly on the highway. We will pull apart

the landscape to not come this way again, and further

reaching into pasts of small things – my skin camouflaging

his hands, sleep pale as candlelight opened

one square at a time with dawn. We lie in different rooms

of this house, listening to the fan push heat

down the hallway, out the windows looking onto grasses grown

high, out-of-hand. He was

around my throat, some heavy, tender creature

reads in musculature all the body’s journey, desire

to rest. Long summer evening overcome at last

with night I disappear in, let fall every visible form,

undressed, for touch is the same as love