three a.m. on christmas eve & I
find you on my doorstep, passing a cigarette back & forth, asking would
I ever crack open? would is an old word, densely vowelled but uncertain, not
really there. but you were. you said, we think
you’d prefer we were gone, you’d prefer to
hold us apart, we want to touch
you with our weather. the
night smacked black in the lights of the houses, the sky
shrank to a stub in your mouths & with
out speaking, I creaked up the stairs, passing your two
pillows adrift on your bed, pressed all about by your arms