“It is the sun’s tale,” he whispered, “and I know it by heart.

How your pink-shaded cheek fit tender in the palm of my hand

Eyes–locked magnets to the mirror of my pupils

I always declined in faith: I was not ready.”

 

It must have been that he saw turquoise tides in her curly hair

Rippling in laughing coils

Or a half moon in her numb lips

Wrists striped in braceleted madness–that was when he turned away.

 

Fear is his ghost

It binges and gluts on a sane head

With words that are upchucks of senseless ragamuffins:

Their meanings need no coaxing

 

His hands do not feather her in cupidity

Only ‘till her breast is a turf, blanket flecks of snow,

Humming, humming.

 

She brings him a stack of cotton pillows

As this is when they string their love in sleep

When the ceiling is expanding, the color of radon,

 

They heard the machinery of the thunderstorm

Lightning in the shape of angel heads

An aureate clock glitters in the sky: a number line of beads

 

Now they enter into an enamored utopia

Sync into mania

He will not kiss her with a crystal lens: it must blur

 

For dreams too, are heartless;  they envelop our eyes

As well as a beguiled spirit

The stars mock the couple. Or perhaps they chase them.

 

But he wakes, she wakes, they wake,

Startled and spinning, as an eyelash dispersed in air

She cannot cry for him, as he built bricks between them

 

They are immured by a howl

Soundly, it clings

To her throat, his mind for something to drag down.

Breath quavers then stops.

Are the two fated or young innamorati?

Is it for which her hands perform his script?

 

His peridot tears glisten, as the lime spring leaves.

They penetrate her heart. Slow, amorous cravings

That yield, that yield, that yield.