Spotlight: Shadow
late night fireplace hiss; you bury yourself in rumpled quilts; woolen sanctums for
solitude.
circling your callused chest is a prison and epiphany— mouths and pectorals make
a reckless truce
to learn the metaphors of symmetry.
we slipped one quarter in love and the rest in snow;
our crumbling house is beige-mess of carpet string, leather sofa stains,
the lacquer of old tears.
no power over knots in unwashed hair;
your back’s galaxy of freckles and skin tags;
years appear to fall in a mute rain,
our falling skin, two skeletons worn on the outside.
we are what we forget: expired lipstick and cigarette smoke.
nothing left in battery-charged eyes
to deny the tar, sticky sweat of ourselves—
throbbing, cluster of atoms,
an illusion of fire.
