82
Twenty years, knock knock, and I'm without strings,
while you, too, rattle your knobs down hallways.
If hawseholes still linger, I don't look for them.
I don't wonder, darling, about the hand,
which waits, without a palm, without an other—
no valence of clouds or eyes in the blue—
mantled above what we can remember,
above the dead side and our varnished pupils.
But what if, what-if we, our cords untangled,
quivered by our fetters, ensnared again?
And the footlights kindled our wooden faces,
and we tossed embraces to jointed limbs,
suspended, while we clattered painted lips.
originally published in How Journal