You say
finish it

like  I have fallen upon you
a moonlit mercenary
eyes bright in the dangerous night

to find you sleeping,
unguarded;

like you opened your eyes
to an almost kiss

as I lowered myself for the ****;

like I would sink,
blade deep—
close enough, 
finally;

like I wouldn't love you still.

My words, defiant, deny me;
they speak in low voices
on dark porches, lose me
in strange cities;

they forget the warmth
of my mouth.

Eyeing me suspiciously,
smug with voweled virtue,
they dismiss my attempts
at reconciliation, saying only

We don't even know who you are *anymore.

Love defies all laws of perspective;
the farther away               it is
the larger it appears.

Nothing else is like that.

What a burning, broken universe—
incalculable, devastating,
things we can't imagine.
We attach names familiar to us
                    Titan, Europa, Calypso
but they are still mighty and immeasurable, terrifying—

but don't think of all that.
It's too big.
It's too sad.

Think of this:

It's sublime and impossible that we even exist
with our
soft flesh and our wet eyes,
our music, our sins, 
our jealous lovers,
our moments of bliss, 
and love— god, love…
more immeasurable
more incalculable
than the universe, 
than whatever it is
that the universe wonders about.

Our smallness shouldn't humble us.
We are tiny demigods
watching the universe expand
from our lawn chairs
while we eat ripe peaches
with sticky hands and smiling mouths.

I learned early
that to speak too soon
or too often
of love

gave words
and weight to
my little prophecy
of loss—

so I stopped speaking.
I carved and polished
my heart into
a Japanese puzzle box

that both discouraged
and excited
with a precise
sequence of 

sliding parts
half twists
secret drawers
and dead ends

so that

by the time 
hands trembled
with the imminence
of conquest

and before the 
contents
could disappoint,

I could be a safe
distance away

saying

*you must have broken it.

An erogenous haunting,
I thrill at his wanting

but more,
I thrill at his pause

to let me unravel
his tangle of wishes

and instill my own meter and rhyme.

He bends to my needing,
my sweetness deceiving.

(but then, I think his may be, too)

Hunter or hunted,
his heartbeat has quickened;

for this moment, at least,
he is mine.