The woman feels the man's presence beside her
like a vacuum.
A darker shape in the darkness of the room;
beads of sweat dry on his chest.
There is an ache in the deepest part of her
but she bears down on it, lets it throb against the sheets.
He turns over and over.

The woman watches the man's long back get dressed.
Convexes and concaves.
He looks at her with alien shyness,
a stranger in her routine, too big for the house.
She swallows the ache and coffee; two cups
with painted birds. He drinks and rises from the table.
She goes to strip the bed.

Jesus,
with all this wine wine wine
the water bill's overdue.

Violet-stained hands don't
wash away no sins.

Baptism don't come from a
faucet that don't run.

And we ran out, baby

there's not a drop to drink.

Give me your last name.
Not her not her not her

me.

I will shed my skin and assume yours.
I will pluck the rings from my fingers
like overripe cherries

and assume yours.

Your name clashes with mine.
It is hard to spell, it rolls like a stone pile.
But I will wear it every day
on my brow like a crown;

on my tongue like communion.

Until some unknown hands chisel it
letter-by-letter onto the stones that will mark us.

he said to me,
and I put my head on his sternum.

A tight skin drum,
crepe over bones.
He had a man's hands but a boy's chest.

To say I only loved him anyway is an injustice.

He had a boy's chest with notches,
a ladder of rib and shoulder blades.
Divots and handholds,
He could be climbed.

And so I did.

I spend most of my time alone
he said to me,
and I slid my hand under his shirt.

You're a great man, I whispered onto his stomach,
a mighty oak,

my wisp of grass.

We were nomads
under a great dome of foreign stars
on a hemisphere of dead grass.

Spinning in wide, looping orbits
around one another and everyone else,

so the points of light blended into
tilt-a-whirl trails
lurching sick circles overhead.

You said: look for anything;
anything extraordinary;
any signs of a pattern.
Anything.

But I was only looking for you darling
darting in and out of my equilibrium.
Search for anything,

any logic in our tides.

So that if we stop our spinning
and stand in the hush of our
naked souls,

I could open my eyes on yours
and lay my pack at your feet.

ik wil
ik wil
ik wil alles

you said to me
your eyes on my eyes
your mouth on my mouth
again and again
into the pit of my neck
alsjeblieft alsjeblieft alsjeblieft

Brussels Bruges or Antwerp.

A slow-moving river
Streetlights

rain, but not anymore,
the concrete will shine.
Darkness, but not quite,
it'll smell like dusk

I will cross the street to where you are waiting,

then the rush:

I will have a wrinkle or two parenthesizing my mouth you will have bags under your eyes perhaps your hair will be going and a few whiskers will be gray and you will still be thin but no longer afraid,

every empty night and single meal will be forgotten and Peter Gabriel will play and I'll start to laugh and so will you because it is funny that we knew it all along,

you will be older and so will I but all those years years years years gone by is the time it took for the seeds to take,

the river will creep past us up and off into the great wide distance towards all the cities that we will live in,

the sun will rise every morning over you and then over me and we will get old old old old