sometimes you come back,
like the peculiar awareness of finitude
soft footed
after we’d been in that small room together
cold
pouring out in white light
leaning over and smiling gently
with a surety of falling snow winter outside
and you described seattle and kurt cobain
and showed me your jars of sand and jars of honey
and I smiled gently and loved you.
and we went out in the cold and you smoked a cigarette
and everything around us was hushed wet in dark gray
you were something that made me ache
honest human, dark and earnest
opened ahead of me
wise and naive
I felt like I’d known you somewhere before
I held you in my vision but didn’t speak

as you told me what men had done to you
I picked up something that was shining on the ground
and thought about what men had done to me