The morning sun was like a torch turned loose
and the flames were licking the edges of the room,

ravaging the shadows as I dreamed in your bed.
Spring was parting the lazy sheer curtains

with pulsating breaths, and then you walked in
on your soft bare feet and came to me.

My first ethereal awareness of it

          as though it were a waking dream...

arose from the silk tips of your hair
falling down around my neck, your fingers 

          the fingers of a sculptor, a liberator,
          poised before an uncut bronze under a lamp...

like gauze linen brushing my face, and then 

         blade upon metal, a shower of sparks, 
         the chisel driving out the emerging shapes, 
         the shapes embracing and 

suddenly your lips there, 
wet and beautiful and playful and I

closed in on them, opened my eyes and there
was your sparkle your skin trembling your

breath rising and crashing in waves
and we—



and then consciousness slapped me in the face.
The hot, molten sculpture of our movement

stopped cold as I awoke this morning 
knowing too well it was summer, not spring,

and knowing too late that you were miles away,
thousands of miles away—and that you never 

came to me. We never took it. We played a baited 
game and forced ourselves to acquiesce to safety—

and safety can never be rightly called love—and the
mystery died, starved of its air, fearful of its own

power, until nothing was left but this dream on 
paper, suffocating words grasping for fuel and yet 

          burning like a wild and desperate torch

something pure and hungry and fearless,
something we whispered in the afterglow

of the bedroom, like brushstrokes on canvas, 
or hammer strikes, one after another, the sparks 

showering the naked floor, the image still perfect
as I lay sweating in an empty bed, the sheets 

twisted like wreckage—words made into 
ravenous flesh, advancing toward me.