To hum in a smoke-dank alley a song
by Elvis
was not the height of my love for
you. To turn
my arm from its socket like a
hateful thing
was not devotion only. To speak your
name
like a spell to my imagined foes was
not
peace, no, not ever. Rather, you
were a stone
I licked and pretended to eat. You
were
ever a dream of falling. An odor of
smoke.
You were the design of my worst
crimes. What I stole for love added
up.
It added up to nothing. To the air
perfumed
by an absent woman. To a box
filled with crushed chalk. God save
me
from the stars, once and for all—
I have had enough. Let me love
anything
but that: let me go free and dream
of green oceans and the surf
that batters some other world to
sleeplessness.
O. It is enough to whisper only
this. To speak to the flame in your
breast
and hear nothing else. Once
I believed I could possess
what touched you: the worn sweater,
or the song on the radio
that meant nothing and all in that
instant.
Against your door I pressed
my ear, and heard nothing, the
whisper
of water, maybe, a breath of cool
air—
the gossip of your absence—
and nothing in me could knock or
wait,
and all around me the night
spread like water through a rag,
and I let my hands drop whatever
they held.