Outside

Slow fire descending this morning, the trees tenuous. It’s late, it’s early. We are our tenses. I intended this to be simpler. Sepia stains your mouth. How you’d lay down, taut as shadow, on my back. Everything we do can be summed up in our hands. This is the hotel where universes are born from such slowness. No need to worry. When Freud writes death just think bottom line. Swoon just when you realize you’ve forgotten how. Yes, that’s the door. All our lives in this moment, the distance, the skin warm silence, planes and cars, hellos and other rehearsed lines just outside. The wrongings and the rightings, it was never meant to be, it was just as it was, was hardly at all. Outside people line up, but for this moment we are close, not looking.