What Lovers Know
(First published in Icarus and included in the collection Necessary Silence)
Touch as if her rounded shoulder
is an amber moon glowing
under your fingertips.
Listen to her voice
as she moves toward you
in the mountain of night.
Your hands are stars
that she will draw inside
until you’re both hot with brightness.
Lay down memory
for this flash across reason.
You will call for her eyes
in ragged years as if they were
children gathered round
to comfort you.
What you share
cannot be undone by age
or sorrow. Her name,
her curtain of soft hair
remains within, turning
like her whisper, toward you.
In the eventual darkness
this will be what matters.
