They meet again
after five ten fifteen years.
He has a son now.
She's had three miscarriages.
His irises are bluer
than she remembers,
shifting in the low light
like cold water over quartz.
She still wears her troubles like tattoos,
secure in their permanence.
He wants to lean across the table,
fix them here, like this,
like paper dolls
dipped in cement,
larks with their wings
clipped to a wall.
He wants to frame the details
of this hour, his hand on the lacquered tabletop,
her hair in a tight chignon
shot through with silver,
her coffee half-finished
and mingling with her blood.
He loves her.
She knows.
We'll go back,
he murmurs
as she rises to leave,
as though
Time is a construct,
a corroded fence in the clearing
between now
and nowhere.
What is love
but delusion and delight.
