SHRINK

She watched, listening intently
as he lay outstretched on the
couch beside her:

the angle of his upturned toes,
the flitch of knee, left to right
while talking of childhood grazes;

how his hips slightly rocked,
the pout of bellybutton beneath his
thick cotton shirt when describing
the note his lover left.

She observed the rise and fall
of empires in every caged breath,
escape from fire racing up the
sudden rash on neck, flooding
animated features and brain.

She knew the mechanics of a
body’s response to loss,
could identify craters in the
moonscape of grief;

yet could not explain how,
beneath his skin, she witnessed
the tilt and turn of a blue-green world,
perambulating slowly through
light and dark of space;

why she was lost in east-west
wavetips of tides and in skudding
clouds of migrating seabirds, towing
the earth through its seasons;

or when the grey in the curl
at the pulse of his temples
became the benediction
of an unknown god,
his voice sponging stains,
reducing scars,

resurrecting lifeless skin
on her softest curve as if
his own lips touched there.