Love (an epilogue)

Tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light... Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of a town that cannot bear your company.

_______Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993




after your visits, __after you're long gone
back to your place __light is heaviest.

i awake remembering that you are and is
, then correct myself: _were , and_was ,

behind a curtain maybe you were.
i got halfway through
before you smiled.
(i walked away, __sadness leads always away,__)
but when i sat
(on the floor, with my back against the couch for support)
you were still there__
(now besides me. __facing ahead . both looking away. __eyesight refracting back onto itself,
all i could see were your eyes)

and you still there.

after your visits, __(you cast shadows on dreams)
back to your place, __(and the aftertaste of memory is morning)

i awake remembering somewhere-else you have established a universe.
a time-machine to when you were just you (before us and we)

i awake in quiet cities. __slow cities.
________________(time here is the cloth of dresses,
_________________nighttime is black hair,

when you visit i am so quiet, __(sadness and shame are silent words) __
so can't tell you:
________________in your city,
________________when kicked rocks roll
________________and accidentally sound my name,
________________i wish you'd recognize it.

i awake in quiet cities. __your cities
________________(sound here is your name,
________________memory is an elemental force
________________which navigates my cosmology-
________________which drifts apart, __expanding myself quietly
________________spreading myself across eons
________________thinning out
________________perfect lightlessness
________________so dark there are no dreams
________________(where sleep at last is peaceful)