Wrist Deep

V

Behind the stars is a darkness,
dark as evil is dark, dark as a man.
We spent our lives trying to find it.
Do you remember being pressing against
it (hard lungs breathing, you between them,
a grunt of not knowing where you were

or who you belonged to. You always belonged
to me; I am emptiness; I was the place between
you and him, or you and her. Don’t you know
that moments between us were spaced
like the spaces between harp strings,
blues and reds, realized only through tones.

Why did you run away from us? What did you
gain? from becoming a nothing mist?
Nothing, you used to say to us. I’m sorry.
And I placed my ribs upon a scaffold
and built up fortresses, planks to put
myself up on. I was high, for a moment.

But there was a fight, a fire-fight,
and you were there too, bright as aurora,
streaking across the sky like I never knew,
bright like I never knew; you,
breaking into fire. Do you remember sitting

lowly, on a couch, made of fake, plastic leather?
Do you remember sinking into what life seemed?)
The stars are slowly fading. I place myself between
them, light clouds shadowing my existence,
as sky turns to a deeper shade of blue,
I scrape another pebble from underneath my shoe.