When turning into the grove, your hand is not as steady and
Does not like to settle close to me—content to look up, up
The universe is a speckled egg
And we are waiting to be born.
They say that starlight is
Good for the complexion (or at least it softens out the curves and
Shifts our shapelessness into barely recognizable
Presence)
I am vain under the quasi-darkness, with an extra linger of liquidated fingers, or
An exaggerated tilting of the neck.
I'd like to tell you that, during the day, my hand makes shadows on the sidewalk
(and I pretend it is my imprint somewhere on the sidewalk—that the shadow of
my hand follows the circuit of your veins,
back to your heart).
There is a difference when you talk—stance, relaxed
There is, too, a myth of half-forgotten cities in the desert, and
Love, settled somewhere in the folds of a muscle (emaciated with disuse) and
You are passionate, almost angry.
Your entire body is strained upwards with the need to fly tonight
And without quite knowing why, you held my hand.
It is the blank stairwell you are looking at, which is harsh and white and
Clinical—
"We should do it again sometime," you said, incomplete and staring at the domestic pattern of my shoes as if there were a better ending to that sentence which you had not thought of yet.
Look at me. (and I was slightly disappointed that you were not telepathic, or at least
A little more inclined to know the meanings of the scuffed shoe and
Pleated skirt.)
My smile imprinted on your collar was red, red and fading into girlish-pink-and-white.