i take my socks off.
i see
on her dusk
a crown of young birches rises up like spindled lines of pencil.
they don't prove their permanence to the old soil>
missing the big trees that used to grow
here.


her body,
like wet leaves burning. the paper bark peeled back from
her forehead
reveals the colony within the soft wood.
down where the air is
as
still as the inside of a halloween
mask,
the fingers of her evening clam up likewise-
and all that it touches
is damp again.

and as i lay my dead smile in her's
,our teeth rest together in
bliss