it began with the fingers of day  

parting the dark and cold to reveal
fresh and green succulent cruelties  
arousing one’s appetite the desire:  

to be a blind witness
in how your absence  
bleach color and bleed form.  

to be deaf to wind fall fail  
find their morning melodies
for without your voice  
there can be no song.  

a brand new day in the season of waiting  
until you would arrive in sight or hearing.  

but now i no longer count the ways
i gather the body of each day  
to join the corpses of yesterday:  

there is only this, and every night,
among promises written with salt or in sand,
a cancer without end, or cure
eating me up while i endure.