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