the body of a man

Tonight my shoulders are strong,

my skin is olive smooth.

I tidy up, I make tea.

The house is quiet, white.

My skin is wasted on the night.

My thoughts, tonight, are wasted, too,

on days cast longways backward

drawn up from the timeline as flames.

My memory’s on fire,

those days ignited by the body of a man.

The body’s an empty silhouette

coming up the walkway to my door-

over and over,

repeat, replay-

puzzlewise his pieces take form

as my wasted skin makes contact-

then and now

so the fires leave me

leave me cold-

makes contact

with this:

a shoulder, bits of mouth, an eye too close and out of focus.

His parts rattle in the body frame

up different stairs to a green space

where previous thoughts of mine I poured

beneath my sound- jade,

so that when I go back, the jade place is

a still pool.

My mouth lay open to those waters

then and now

my face is captured in them, blank

headed does a body go,

now and then,

deliquescent into nights.