last days of august. and my heart knows it. it’s on a high for what comes next. always reaching for what’s next. haughtily, even.

this morning i was half asleep, watching the road without tenderness. hands on a steering wheel. your closed eyes in the rearview mirror. later, your hand shooting out to hold me close when the car swerved.

last night i was planetary, orbital, insatiable. everything in slow motion, foreign despite its familiarity.

this evening, i was wide awake. watching the moon while walking aimlessly on 61st street after drinks and dumplings, texting you lines from poems, forgetting to look up to see if i was at the right stop.

looking for something protective, firm, resolute; that never came. this feeling reminded me of you. the point is always to be reaching but never arrived, you taught me. and if the void was there yet there existed no words to describe it, perhaps we could make it disappear.

Across a city from you, I’m with you
just as an August night
moony, inlet-warm, seabathed, I watched you sleep,
the scrubbed, sheenless wood of the dressing-table
cluttered with our brushes, books, vials in the moonlight—
or a salt-mist orchard, lying at your side
watching red sunset through the screendoor of the cabin,
G minor Mozart on the tape-recorder,
falling asleep to the music of the sea.
This island of Manhattan is wide enough
for both of us, and narrow:
I can hear your breath tonight, I know how your face
lies upturned, the halflight tracing
your generous, delicate mouth
where grief and laughter sleep together.