If you are to know the shell
of somebody else,
the taste of their mouth
as familiar as breathing,

     you are to swell
     with the installation of life
     within a fistful of seasons,
     (they’ll use words such as ‘glowing’),

and you will raise a hand
to shield yourself
from the gush of paper hearts
we’ll drizzle without a second thought.

     You are to settle in
     to bargain supermarket wine,
     the infrequent date night
     with no toddler caterwaul

and I will say what I always believed,
that the moment you disclosed it
was the moment that I felt it, again,
start of a sever, a languid dissolve.