I do not know where your hands rest
when you speak.

but your knees are rounded
smoothing river rock and once I stared
at them in a wine-hazed fire,
and I called them beautiful but you
seemed afraid so I stopped that.

you have a perfect nose.

I am skittish in your focus
   , rolled and shaken,
   hazy when you laugh and ask
   for more, I cannot be sure
   that you mean it.
where do your eyes sit when you
ask questions, where do your
ears go to answer?

we talked so long, I think.

you mad ,but you magic
there no lie in your fire
as much as I can, I do mean it.

even if we were only close once,
with that glass tree hidden on
bull street, (you sang into the bottles;
it sounded hopeless and I loved it)
                 even if we were only close when you
                 kicked the candles across the room
                 with all the glass clanging
                 with us laughing our all out, throat roaring
                 even if that was it,
                 I would wake up again on your couch
knowing how your face may look perfect in the
softer morning-haze, with your foot cooling from
the cover, I would drive home in the sun, barely
awake; I would do this all again.

you are a body in a boat
on the lake with the shadows
of a million birds over your chest
and you are breathing with them all

and the waves want you
like I want you
and we will both kiss the tips
of your dripping fingers
stretching from your crinkled
hand, like all of Tennessee
in your palm.

oh, how full of fog you are.

you are a body in a boat
on the lake with that shore
covered in rocks, unskipped
the plants unpulled,
roots unslipped.

but as your fingers drip
from body to liquid
the discs of ripples
                     spread
to me on that shore
holding my own
               holy head

so little did we know                          (so little did we know)
those ripples were not our own
but instead
the alternating white/blue
of iris and cornea
of skin and vein
of hand and sky                                  (of iris and cornea
that all go away                                    of skin and vein
that all die                                              of hand and sky)

and one day, we will find
(beneath the shadows cast
by temporary leaves)                        (that all go away
our own bones, buried deep              that all die)
under the roots.

                                                         ­       (our own bones, buried deep
                                                            ­      under the roots)

                                                   *and you are breathing with them all

when the skin of the earth
was not yet old enough to know
the grey light,
she spoke to his corpse
floated on a shipwreck.

her tongue stayed tamed
behind her teeth,
but her hidden hands shook
against the boards
clattering as a broken shutter
in a thunderstorm
when the world was black
and wet and fast.

Love,
stop filling the backs of
my eyes with your pressures
rubbing tiny orbs with
backlit diamond roughings,
your face is the roof of
an opened shrine.
      cut me with your writ
      slide the s through every word
      until the tips of your arms
      are dragging the grounds with
      a weight of water-colored birds.

I wished you a thorough
processing into particle,
small and simple to dismiss,
if only to save the last
dusting breath that kept us both
unshaken.