To a Former Ally

Years later, I referred doggedly
to the anatomy of our love.

I found no loosened sheaths,
no soft and ugly paleness
to justify the burglary,
and our tender touches
away from the light
had left behind
none a mushrooming,
shadowed bruise.

But silence can be horrifyingly
intrusive. It lies in wait
like a bulky bogeyman
with drunken eyes
and a dog’s attentive whine
to love me, love us,
to be loved back
like an echo.

While in diplomatic embrace,
should I have cut loose
your hair from mine,
unbound the ties that bound
like a fortune-teller-murderer-lover would?

Should I never have aspired
to What-If History, armed with
(1) a WMD
(2) a conscience packed lovingly into a moon’s span
(3) a paperpack romance, dog-eared
(all the paraphernalia of faith)?

Now our patience
is worn thin and in the cold,
so steely womb
of a detonated shell
we lie like fetuses
drinking each other in
-- twins competing, in silence,
for life.

Love could never
have been a translator
between such transient allies--
Man and Woman;
Mother and Child

(Now I fear it might be World War all over again.)