That we can exist here in this dusky amber evening
is a privilege I am not yet willing to put down;
that I can watch the industry steel fan
ruffle your hair like silk
in a near-silent half hour, fairytale dozing
with me sat on the floor in a jigsaw of mild sunburn
and heat hives. The city breathes convex, a quadrilateral
tensing out of its seams and relaxing at the sound
of a street musician, or laughter, always strained
but never too close or far from collapse.
Dinner chat will glide from pancakes to long term
boyfriends in the space of two sips of water, how my
half-dazzled heart will yearn for romance like a sun kisses a flower
yet let me be frank right here on in this burger restaurant : it cannot
replace the light on your face sitting across from me,
how after five years of blessed time you are stood like a painting that I can’t quite touch
in that unfinished rapturing, that breathless awe
as daylight fades. We will disagree on the sale of lover’s postcards
at the market at midday, the private and the personal,
antimony on matrimony, the culmination of ‘old married couple;’
jokes sat on a tattooed bench waving at pin sized boat passengers.
While I wait for my privacy to unfurl, maybe when autumn leaves fall, you use my hairbrush,
a net curtain whistles thin as a breath in the winding down,
the evening song.
Skin crawling with something as easy, as human as love: sundrenched, aglow –
this is the only time I will ever know.