the night is tender

The Night is Tender

I slant forward lighting cigarettes, then diving down afterward out of the blue toward other weather; the lush midsummer moment outside of dawn and into the pillows, to keep the light from our eyes. Some shadows swayed with the motion of the pines outside. Two bumble-bees. The sky was low at night, full of the presence of a platform, with spring twilight gilding the rails and the glass in between being centripetal and centrifugal. She felt his footprints as she crossed the garden; and now the rain that touched his cheek.

The lakes are sunk in brown clay and the boat is made to carry my form forward into the blues creases of a belly. The photographer gave us the picture of me, I am motionless against the sky and only remember the sun-torn flesh of his shoulder; the best thing that could have happened.

featureless sky time was already over.