PART ONE

I

I would wake up every morning to watch the sun rise, and the weight of your body would be warm and sparking beside me.  I would wake to watch the apple trees.  They were red, a deep red, an otherworldly red, stark brilliant against the fierce white snow.  The whole city was still and chilly, glass gods in slumber.  The people were asleep too, the people were asleep and our faucet was asleep, and the cracks laced around our ceiling were asleep, and the rough paint on our table was asleep, and the dust twirling past the sun was asleep.

In that single moment, the city knew peace.

We were awake, the apples and I.

We were awake, at the turning of the world.

II

3:33—The New Year.  You are tall and silent.  Not a cold sort, but one of reverie, of wordless thought.  I would like to stand with you in a sanctuary, wild and endless stone behind us, a pool of gold water before us, a bed of trees beyond us—

And now you are across the room, distinct.  Apart.  A figure that will not meld with the wave of people.  Champagne, music.  Incessant chatter.  Rouge, perhaps some cologne.  But you, apart.  Distinct.  A song with one note off-key, sacred in its error.  A touch of surrealism.  Unsure, unsure, a child unsure, a gust of wind from far-away places, a fleck of lint on a homeless man's coat, the crackle of an old screen in summer, the thunder that will not cease.  In lifetimes before, did you die for me?

The man beside me asks, "Sweetheart, are you ready to go?"

He has no nametag, and for a second, I am lost in time.

III

Train carriage in rush hour I steer the clock into a French circle and double the hours won't you, won't you, won't you—the baby beside me is screaming.  An old woman there, a sleeping boy here and a man with sharks' teeth.  The sweat and stench of the daily grind, I push the clock.  I push the clock, and you smile.  Over four hundred seats, over two thousand four hundred seats, you are bound

too real, too fast

i am lonely when you leave, your face shadowed and shaking.  we are smiling we are smiling, the smile of strangers unprepared.  i would tell you about sophocles if it would make you stay, i would tell you about sophocles and jung and transhumanism and the plunging state of the world's economy,

But the clock is begging to resume, and I hold nothing but crumbs in my hand, of all the inside jokes and skipped meals, whispered lyrics and explosions of laughter, aching lungs and weatherworn

letters that we never had.

IV

i saw a tree fly away with the wind.  we stared, my lonely kitchen sink and i.  that evening

you turned to me in an onslaught of beautiful people and said, "Let's get out of here."

"Ok."

The park was breathing.  We walked until the sun winked, until the cricket songs faded.  You told me long-ago stories and the way your eyes worked and the way you inhaled and of all the times you were afraid of heights.  And I think I spoke too, I can't quite remember, you'll have to forgive me because—

"Are you sure we haven't met before?"

"No."  No.

A small boy chasing a ball, black and white, the grass that grew during slow, slow days.

"Tell me we haven't met before."

"No."

V

And here is a secret:
We have met before.

PART TWO

I

you are everest, pulled into a boxCrammed
down flung
Shot skimming across a runway.  shutters
attached to necks and
cold, cold, lights you wear
Lightskin, sharkskin, your
skin,
a watery grave of arched necks and lips

The danger is, not to let them scare you.

i am small, a droplet in an air-conditioned room a droplet
that has no place, a droplet that
cannot go home—

And you, touched by the hands of women
i do not know, your body
paraded, a head on a stick across the palais-royal and
the glorious abandonment with a side dish of
Easy Cash.  it means nothing that they trace the marks
my lips made long ago, the marks i swore
would shelter him

who is daddy kissing in this picture, your daughter asks. and why—
it's late, darling i reply.  her hair, the fragile ghost of poppies, and the window that asks
of you.

there are husbands who are lonely, too.

II

You came to me, and I could barely utter a hello.
You came to me, and the snow went to sleep.

Only you, you whispered, and the moon bid the ocean
Silent.

It had begun to rain.