We stare at each other while in an
Under-rehearsed waltz around the coffee table
Keeping us an armwidth apart.
Stiff as oak, we resist the breeze from the window,
Tensing with the smallest tremors in our roots.

Touching our fingers will let the dominos fall-
Your jeans taking off my socks ripping off your shirt pulling
On my bra straps- I walk toward the couch,
You, the window.

I start to wonder how your hair looks hung to dry, sweaty,
Over an ached and trembling brow
When you hang your hat on the chair.

You tell me the evening weather is pleasant
While my thoughts are in our hands, clenching,
Longing for skin and breath in grasp.
My eyes light a wildfire on your neck.

Every step is flint stone and steel wool.
Can I take off your coat
Welds the air between us stiff, baking
And begging to be dowsed.
The floor ripples under your extended palm.

So you came down to me:
     at my feet, not the wax
     leaves of the wild blueberry but your fiery self, a whole
     pasture of fire
Louise Glück*

There was flutter of worked cotton hem
between fingers. Ring of cicada click in birch tree leaves,
muffled by swish of grass in breeze, matching

the wisp of sandhill crane feather on fern.
Skin sliding over fragrant sweat.
Sweet waterfall of hair in your hands, fluid in the heat.

Echoing flap of fat trout tail bounced inside the valley,
Scales skimming lake water. Our knees shook
above the foot-bridged creek.

Low groans of swaying trees, aching
in their old bones. Guttural tones.
Your palm shivered on my heart in the haunted noise.

Beneath all our sounds, the under-ripe
blueberries thudded to the ground.
Our love pounded best when they were still green.

On Mars there is a merry-go-round,
Carnival music cast into ether to scatter through the asteroid belt.

There are probably fireworks on Neptune
Set to the solar system’s intergalactic anthem.

Several stars away, a few light year blinks,
A thoughtful ear might hear a car crash, the dislocation of a shoulder.

Hubble, aging in ancient expanse, no doubt squints.
She struggles to focus, senile metal heaving in its last orbits.

What does the sound of the border between Space
And Earth feel like? The inside of a vacuum cleaner? A harp string vibration?

The belly of the Sun churns from the low gurgle
Of gas station sandwiches. This is why he is stationary.

We crave the experience of watching a supernova
And listening years later, anticipating rising crest and falling trough.

Eons in our future, we’ll hear the coo of the waking universe, muffled
From primordial placenta, slapped to breathing by the biggest question.

The farmer cuts the corn,
Swear from his brow on the wooden handle.
Before the calf was born
The farmer cut the corn,
His sickle left the fibers torn.
5 AM, his daughter lights a candle
While her father cuts the corn,
A shiver on her brow, hand on the wooden mantle.

Your watermelon vine fingers
Caress my sunflower stalk spine.
We dig our trowel toes into the lome
Of my mattress,
Cover our shoulders in frost-evading fleece.
I hear your heart ripen under your skin.
I smell the heat inside your lungs
Growing and expanding in the August crisp.
You seed a whispered kiss on my lip.

You are planted inside me,
digging into me,
And I bind to your stem
With my peach flowered palm.
We bloom at the first ray of morning as
I weave deeper into your trellis arms.
Our breaths match the pull of the wind.
You touch your forehead to my breast,
Our stems heaving.

Here we grew our love.
Here we grew the foundation of our separation.

When I stare at my wall
With the right slant of head
I feel my toes in Superior sand,
Remember the silhouette of your hands
On my back. I hear the water,
Your breathing, how they were
The same. I feel your timid face
On my nose, telling me stories
Of every crevice in your atrium.
I taste the warmth of your tongue
Breaking through your blossomed lips,
Inching nearer my teeth with every ended
Chapter of aorta.
I catch your warmth as it boils under my chin,
despite Northern winds,
watch our chests weld into one with our heat.
I see your soft eyes,
Drowning in your heavy lids
As they fall asleep to the sound of our
Silence.

But your hands were too big for mine
That afternoon.
I think maybe you need to shrink,
Or I need to grow.
Or we will meet in the middle,
Frightened and in love
with our new shape and size.

When you look at me
I kiss you with my eyes,
Lashes hitting each **** in your heart
Which I taste in my mouth,
Rusted iron clots.

When you look at me
My knees buckle
Under the smell of your warmth
Behind each tooth,
In the snug of your baseball cap.

When you look at me
My fingers resist to trace
The lines of your face, down
To shoulder blades and tendons
In your arms.

When I look at you
I sweat in anticipation
Of someday, maybe, understanding
Everything blooming about you
Under the beds of your nails.