to Alan with love, Susan
Sometimes,
when the moon is full,
and the candles that illuminate my mind
burn brightly,
so that I cannot find
that sweet, dark passage
to sleep,
I roll over
and spoon up close
to him
and drape my arm across his body, where,
even in his sleep,
he clasps it close to his chest.
And I trick Time at its own game,
the one where it says it is
a line
with a past,
a present.
and a future,
and I know that time is
a sphere,
a fabric
that encompasses the two of us here.
I know there have been times when I have been
without him,
and there will be times again
when he will leave me
utterly alone in the world.
I will cry out in my anguish,
“Bring him back to me!
How could you take him from me!?”
And there, under the full moon,
I imagine that he has come back
to me,
in my longing
and my loss,
and I feel my arm held tightly under his,
and I feel his bare gootsicka
against my bare lap,
and my belly in the small of his back
and my breasts against his smooth skin,
and I smile in my gratitude and
good fortune
that,
having lost him to Time,
I find him again
in my arms.
