Small Rain, the Sound of Breathing
The way a little too much caution
creaks the floorboards more than clumsiness –
so the rain, tonight, small spatters, all around the house…
The way I ease the body-weight
of last night’s sleep to the edge of the bed…
Its cartilages crackle at the shift. Love, the dream of deft,
of as-if-casual moving, may be beyond us from here on.
The skill will be consideration –
all I’ve learnt of the shapes of the dark, the heft
of a mattress, a chair, familiar as my own extremities,
the door’s slight stick and shudder
like my heart does sometimes… All I want
is to give you what’s left of the night. Considerations:
as if there was only one breathing between us
so that either might catch
the sound of the other’s, hold it, place it
back beside them in a still-warm imprint in the pillow
undisturbed; as bird migrations
in their season might pass over frontiers
with no more sound than small rain, a flickering
of not-quite-so-dark in the dark, while the border guards sleep.