You lay in a bed in a little tin box
on an old steep face, the very nose of the mountain,
and the rain thrilled your ears
banging on the roof like myriad angry fingers
hungry to get at you.
The wind smacked its palm against the window
threatening to take you off your perch,
all the way into the sea and below.
You are no god, it howled, cede this throne.

Miles away a fan purred into my ear
like a thoughtless cat on the bedside table,
not a rhythm aside from two pairs of lungs filling.
My hands rose then fell
not yet quivering with the knowledge
of their misdeed. Snow drifted, sifted down,
a benevolent blanket across the night campus’ indecency
but filled with dark footprints before I woke
so the crinkled face also greeted me.
These were angels, once.

Remind me again, how we believed in travel
as a way to grow, to understand?
It seems to have loosed night horrors upon us both,
where before we kissed, oblivious
to the world of rain. The stars held no empty promises
while our hearts beat whole and brimmed.
Our hands held only one another’s hands.

We shivered, I imagine, at just the same moment,
but across the miles felt, each, alone.
Places come between us;
we recall the prophetic line you cannot go home.
You say nothing of your travels, but mirror
the hard face often, as if to say, you did in fact fall.
And in your eyes I see myself, I am bare with no excuse,
lost upon the waves.
I hide my hands behind my back, not a pure finger
with which to fish you from the deep.