There but for the Grace Of

When you were a poppy seed, I carried your bed inside me.
Something I could only imagine.
 
At night, before I’ve turned out the last light
I open the door to your room and wait
 
in the sugary gloom for my eyes to determine 
the shape of you. Your head appears first, 
 
tangle of dark heat against the pillow, then 
your arms, rainbowed above your head, or bent
 
like lightning across your ribs, as if drawing 
back a bowstring. Warrior improbably at rest. 
 
I step quietly toward your bed to see 
the sleeping flower of your face, closed 
 
cabochon eyes watching the world that lives 
behind this one, ruby mouth ajar, breathing out 
 
blessings like leafed pages of a book of psalms, 
milk teeth glinting, tiny marble prayer tokens for 
 
forgiveness. It’s not that your sighs tell me 
that I don’t belong but I’m kneeling in a chapel 
 
in the jurisdiction of adjacent-to-familiar and
I know I can’t stay long. They say love 
 
is a language spoken without words, 
a repertoire of images we shuffle through 
 
like tarot. That we shape beloveds out of clouds 
like clay, smoothing contours with caresses—
 
There you are.