Our story is a window.Stroke by strokemy body remembers that life& cries for the missing parts of itself—Cracked hands, dry tongueOpening even on winter SundaysAs iced-over tulips into the flesh—My legs want to lock, to mergeInto one muscle, I swear I knowPrecisely how my cobwebs of cellsWould feel, sprawled in that reverieOf found words & shoreline jogs,What a backlash of longingswoons from the sinew—What beer undrunk, half-muttered prayers,Barbecued ribs ungnawed,bloated sailors in the sky.How brittle the gloss of understanding.Memory’s glass holds nothing but itself.Its window watches me. Our oily printsStain its glass like a bruise.A halo of breath will always be waiting,Maybe inside, maybe outside.This heart tilts & pitches its monotonous metronomeFor our water-rimmed kneesDangling over the dock, our obsessive eyesGazing into each other’s gaze,Calibrating sunlight.To be fed by sunlight,Our bodies pearledIn blind feeling. If we went on foreverWe would forever end.We were the stars, we were translucent gills,We were the silver tidesSinking, the roaring shatter & gleamScaling along the luminous flamboyanceOf the bay’s body,Lost like victoryInside that enchanted Eden,That consummate bitter bliss that made us part our lips to taste,To relish falling againstThe genesis& finale of our own.
Image: Courting by the Window Grille, 1874, José Moreno Carbonero