
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.
1 reply on “There but for the Grace Of”
Beautiful!