When we were nothing more than a line on a page
the author daydreaming of what it would feel like to meet
the other part of herself
the pencil half tracing an arc and then dropping off in thought
for she did not believe it possible, for she had stayed inside her box
such a long time it had become second-nature to assume
there was nothing more, and if perchance, it was only illusion
when we hadn’t grown flesh and hands and eyes and mouths
licking and touching and fitful for all of its circumference
and mad for it, with the supple sway of lovers
bending to each other’s lightest trace
when we were two people walking in opposite
unawares of the fall of love, or how it can plunge so deeply
the violence of a hearts commitment
then, you had a cocksure approach
keeping yourself remote, never getting close
and I was like a cake without frosting
not knowing how it would be to grab and eat a mouthful
for someone to climb inside and inhabit me
I was undamaged or at least less scored
by your whetted knife of emotion and longing
and you were safe in that way all who refuse to play
remain aloof and jaded against
what they have never allowed entry
it was perhaps the greatest pain to open ourselves
to the possibility and the defeat
for in feeling everything there is sometimes only
that high rising gloat toward the eclipse
then the rest of time spent recalling
as a drug fix, the chambered splendor of fantasy
you leave me void and furied with untamed
need to bring you to my mouth, my flowering chest
I’d sooner bury this confession than discover in another’s arms
the blank expression of indifference
when we lurch on sea-sick ship, sailing apart
the cruelty of love
or something approximate
is a shrill bird call over the top of trees
warning all those who dare discover
the taste of things unrecoverable
as these marks on my skin will
stay as symbols
of what we were and
endeavoured by that stark hour
to preserve for another season
when the flowers fall from the trees
and the birds, tired of cold nights
fly south in blue lines