Together We Cry

As misunderstanding stood up and walked

out of the room, his eyes met mine

as if to say follow, follow and i'll dive

into your soul, to that sacred secret place

beneath the tightrope, beneath the falling

clouds, and together we'll wander through

shards of glass like a cemetery and feel

the blood rush to the tips of our fingers

and spill out at impossible angles,

like the look in your eyes right now.

He painted the colors of the skies at sunset

as he walked past, blowing away thousands of years

of dust, uncovering the leaf tattooed on the sandstone

shoulder of the Earth. He could have painted

the moon and the stars and lifted me effortlessly

into that submission of the leaves to autumn,

that submission that causes decay and resurgence

to a life unknown the day before, the year before, my

life before the flood. And he tangled his fingers

in my long hair with his eyes, that forgiven

sin of Adam the morning after his first kiss,

his first taste of the empty pond and the decrepit

barn where his father taught him to milk

their ayrshire, singing not a word not

a word not a word - his father would stand there

crying crucify and climb into the loft. Adam

gently squeezed the utters, not knowing

when to stop or when the next day would come,

unwanted and uncolored by the cold air

on his cheeks. I stood there and wept,

knowing that misunderstanding had left

the room to us, strangers of twenty years.

I looked across the room at the slowly burning

fire, the heat gently burping the stew, patting

gently and singing rockabye baby. His head

in his hands and the bottle at his feet, half full

in the evening light, he wandered through

that distant land of enthusiastic love, now memorialized

in the photo album under the bed, collecting dust.

Now, as winds clap their hands against the windows

in pungent delight, as the orchestral touch

of his hands against my shivering body inspires

eminence, as my mouth opens and closes, surrounding

the earth and heavens in ephemeral night, I

wrap him around me, his every inch of skin against

mine, a tapestry hanging on the wall above our bed.