the silence is so perfect that it breathes ellipses.
i am haunted by impermanence,
thoughts spilling from my synapses like dream wine,
red and burning until they hit the air, then only
condensation
rimming my dry tongue as i taste the damp-smell of our sky.

I am thinking of the color white and death
while you knead my thigh and immerse yourself in
atmospheric anticipation, and the candles burn for you,
delighted by human touch. they can only hiss
soft desires etched in smoke, voices charred
within their own brilliance. it is a lost night,
thrumming with the shatter of raindrops and undercurrents
of ancient heartbeats.

we ourselves pulse with history and seethe
with darkness, and each lover before us gurgles and sings
with hot-eyed lust. we are no longer dancers now, but man
and woman, you breathing hard and sweat-soaked while I,
the bone-carved, hesitate to play my part.

I decide to envy candles-
unable to make contact, but
so devoted to oxygen that they cannot live apart.

then you speak
in a spray of peacock feathers, voice iridescent and plumed.
"let's go to bed."

I cannot help but wonder if
you will watch the sun rise at my side,
or

if you will, in a wave
of evaporated darkness,

flee with the moon.