I thought of you the other night
just before my eyes went heavy
around the edges, before my breath
shallowed into its muscular
un-having, until the window
was the shape of your body
and your body was the shape
of every object in the room
this isn’t about your body
as much as your body’s inner lining
all light and unexplored psychic rivers
water from water forking into itself
two bodies speaking a third
how do I say something other than
love, other than cliché,
like if I didn’t know you
& we passed as strangers in the night
you would find me out
place me into your hand like a talisman
and search for my engraving
“to whom it may concern”
you move in me like rearranged molecules
magnetized against the sun
and the sum of this, the overflow
is that I don’t have enough room
for your shadows at this time of night
that my eyelids can’t adjust
that my heart can’t take it,
and then something like sleep.
This article appears in May 2016.
