now it is the time

(mattew stone heavy in the pool of my heart)

To go to sleep. I know that’s what I said, I know you heard me, that’s why you were lying down, your head anticipatory on the pillow, sharp black hair against white cotton and flat palm to open sheet. you wanted me and I had said I wanted you and the falling out of that declaration of war was to be the stewing in the golden band of shared, marital flatulence weighed down by the sheets, the covers, the marble lozenge of beloved wife weighing it all right down, just in case my spirit should jump up jump up and try to throw itself into the river. but the streets are not so quiet, for though the cars are still or still enough, I can still hear the voices through the walls and they are a wide wake, what wondrous love is this that shatters like a bottle in the night? this is the dreadful curse for our souls. but I am wide awake, and listening to your body breathing in the hard blue moon night. observe a minute silence and we will try and right the world on its axis with small talk and pretty dresses and the light morsel of the canape, and when from death I am free, I’ll march every ingredient back to its righteous home at the hearth of god, soft the oily salmon slice, which was once a leaping fish, a tongue upon my tongue, I can taste the liberation of the sea. take everything backwards, take it back, ungrown, unborn, unaged, unlived, I look at the curtain on the window at the foot of the bed which is open to just a silver line of moon and night singing through, and somehow the curtain always seems to be drawing itself together, two palms meeting in perpetual prayer, and never yet meeting, always open just a little of light and line and moon, what wondrous love is this? you are the curse of my days and the bane of my body. I am sinking down, head upon the pillow as drunk as I can make it before there’s crying. I will love you as I only can, with some gentle hand upon your arm, walking on the deep green carpet, looking at the heavy wood walls, thinking of the terror of the curtain never closing and outside there always being some sharp and painful light that is illuminating this. together we can excuse all the sins we would never pleasure alone.

oh my soul.

there is nothing to say after a minute silence.