Midway upon the Journey of Our Life – Somehow I'd Wandered into the Middle of a Letter

Every spark is numbered. This one’s the first. This one’s the second. We seal them with the ecstatic limit. In the absence of waking to the other’s face we send each other songs for the morning. Let another’s voice stand in. What distance, far, always the night stretched too long. Standing under orange lights by the rolled-down window of your car, that in-between space. That touch, how seldomly. We cannot resist! So rend me to keep from holding back again and again.

Staring at the ground during the eclipse the outlines of our bodies bending into unfamiliar shapes. The greatest drama wasn’t the sun but the silhouettes of the leaves. And how to avoid other people. And learning to wait. Are we in totality yet? And now? You know, according to some, without an obstacle there is no desire. But this must be a different wealth. That first year is gone and we move from wondering, the night and jars of mezcal I’d rather smell than drink, to something else.




 

It’s not the sea, we find surprises: empty outdoor pool marked with plus signs. Or sun’s extinction – be observed – across the balcony all those little moon arcs shed from the trees. Or no is sunset’s perhaps – only I miss most the cemetery of our old city. To be alone together with someone else’s dead. It is centre, there all the time – . While you traveled I collected your mail, drank the coffee left as a gift by your ex, and have looked a little like you since – which is nearly a comfort.




 

Our parting was somewhat interspersed, the way we refused to. That night walk where we are interrupted by the sudden hiss of two hundred sprinklers startling on all at once. Their high arcs turn the cemetery into a labyrinth. Or under the lamplights they turn to leaping dogs. You run to avoid getting soaked and I refuse to move faster. I told you nearly everything. Now I wish we ran directly in. Undressed when we wanted. Let go a little looser, betrothed without the swoon.




 

When I took you to my first city, to whisper to the hive trapped between glass in my favorite murmuring place – I didn’t tell you I told them to take back their bees. We have no field for them – living between this place and that. Our reflections pressed to the combs. Believe me, I know that which makes them as forgot. Surely you’ve heard the beloved saying – the heart has many doors – yet take her from the lawn and she becomes the smallest housewife in the grass. I sometimes remember we are.




 

Let our first city teach us how to not stand at the shore waiting. I expected summer, expected to keep driving, to hit a horizon hedged by water. Instead it is spring, the flowers are sweet and bright and look as if they would kiss one – ah, they expect a humming-bird. Clover – I am not perverse to plucking. I forgo expectations. Open an unrending of us. On this blue ship a needle dips in and out of the sails, repairing surface after surface to better gather a sigh.




 

There is no first, or last – N., should we forgive us our amatory strain? Born – bridalled – shrouded – in a day – or the hummingbird vines propagating themselves without effort or imagination. Strange things always go alone. Did we generate this landscape? The wife – without the sign! You arrived amidst all these unfurled flowers – the texts already dissembling to seed. You entered with the sea. If the overgrowing garden lived in the house long before our time – let us in – forever – refuse to pull the weeds.