It is already arranged

there in the uncluttered portion of my heart

where simple things lay flat like

pressed linen cloth awaiting the weight of fork.

This year; bruised branches split like dry husks

coughing out their hibernating marrow

against Winter’s frosted, relentless betrothal

and you look older, the tugged downturn

of your eyes, gravities Siamese clamor

as time winnows her efforts with

feathering stroke and what is not said

lays dormant like unlit coal in our hearth.

It is written: If you go, I go with you

we are a chain forged in occidental fate

where night lifts her greying skirts to invite morning

I watch you turn fitful in your engulfing sleep

all the years flickering like an old 16m film playing

to sleeping audience with muted sound

the click of tape, machine, motion, glossy in dark

we know what we see by the familiar ache provoked

your titan hands lifting me over your head

catching pollen in my assent, drooling joy

like spiders web will lacquer luster in dew

moments, so distant, they feel unreal, fiction

forged in time, pockets full of aches, wrapped and stored

like crab apples, promising no worm

we cannot live with regret so we put it down

and step away carefully, polishing suspended breath

till beckoned back, years hence, your shoulders

dry with prayer, our voices a lament, even

in cold air, where articulation is lost

I long to protect you, preserve, return

stave the crease of time from your brow

repair the hours fallen in ascendance

where memory has devoured, quilts of bright cold

patched them against coming shriek of wind

blowing relentless about recollections fragile tinder

when we were young and redolent with seeded urge

to climb beyond expectation, arms filled with longing

for what is lost now, has no name

no place; it scatters like time is brushed away by us

when the room was patterned in 1970’s hour

paisley print and cold sheets, wan plants leached of sun

your young heart then, unemptied as

my mother’s beauty still bore warm flame

possessed of solvent wax and nourished hope

I stood in the doorway with my toy badger

watching this paper world unfold in mislaid chapters

not once did I think of what would not

still be waiting, as days become decades

we stand on pointe, diminishing photos behind glass

put in drawers, wrecked of momentum

you; almost a stranger in unschooled history

with your thinned lips and stooped back

a flicker yet, one ember, one familiar evocation

and I am that girl again, claiming your strength

lifted over your head, to spin, and whirl and laugh

before they blow the candle wick of flame

before we must, before we cannot

let go.