Keyhole

The gentle clasp of our pinkies
undid, and I said
nothing. I let the body go (anything
for love) into the hungry palms, the sharp
smell of red, the clamor like
a fervent lovers’ dance.

Outside the bedroom walls
the trees bellowed green,
tossed their heads against the gray.
I lay beneath the storm, imagining
in all the twisting of the tongues,
one leaf was standing still
in a keyhole in the wind.

The door knocked closed.

One last green shutter, then silence
around the crack, split up the side of love:
this failure of desire to care.
Heavily, night crept into the empty room,
leaking through the branches, the veins,

the months I lay,
the slow blinking moon around me in the bed sheets.
All the deep red books weighed down the shelves.
The curtains swayed, deceptive like a ghost,
and the silhouette of a few words hung painfully
in the throat waiting to say
welcome home.

The window looked over the casual collision of streets.
Fear, in a single breath, kept rasping:
you will never love again, the world is too big.
In the dark kitchen I swallowed each melting thing,
each ice cube from the freezer, as if
mastering the one sure dance, that rhythm of departure.