Seventy-nine days ago I walked home in early
September wearing a smell
of you.


       You said once, while massaging my back,
                   tense and fickle, but folding
             under your hands;
      “We're all off ***. It's a matter of increments.”

Today, moving back and forth in this building
It's rough-cut stone walls a consolation,    

I think, borderline obsessively,

You don't know what to do
with a woman like me,
do you?