We lie a bed,
Sheltered in cloud,
Your words, soft, cut
Like fawning feathers
Serrated in a bone vise,
Our mattress was a grave,
Six feet, founded asunder,
Your pulling hair ropes me in
Two, the fabric of fleet, tightening
Fingers, laid without guile nor shame,
Without a drop of torn, tearing tenderness,
I am hollow in bleak breaking, spiking silences,
You remain cautionary, vacant in the blanketed hush
Tried, as we were doomed, in the noonday rush of sun
That slept in crawling frosts of creeping shade.