Before Sleep Was Savage to What Might Have Been
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we slipped past
the last temporal things,
a squeaking cemetery gate
complaining, perhaps,
that we were too alive,
showing off among the dead—
you, too beautiful, as if a lie
for the sake of the poem,
laughing among stones
which barely held down eternity,
you wherever I would touch,
as we played tag
on our fingertips.

It meant nothing when a bee,
that dark brow furrowed
about an eye,
darted upon you madly.
We knocked it off
in a rinse of silence
smudged face to face,
skittish.
You said you didn’t
want to be famous.
Then a kiss became a quandary.
I took you into a smile
that drew to your eyes
sparks of an ancient fire,
the mounds not mown,
the winds restless about staying.