postlapsarian.

i am of soft leather
worn yet strong
a street light analyst
the frame for what follows
i waited then for the shadows
of your face to be that way,
between five trees
i expected the water at the beach
to be different, or at least
for the slow, yellow carp
to be moving under the bridge.
it was then
with the departure of our hands,
with mankind falling
inducing the fall of oak leaves
that only the ghost memory of bells
would ring
and your body would sound in the morning
and me in my blue and white dress
and you in your shoes
with pointed white tips, and my boots
would crunch through perfect white snow
only the salt
of me is not your stranger
and the shouldering whiskers of you
are not my father's, nor
the whip of your tongue
the lips of my mouth
the teeth of human bone tarnished
from something you once spoke of hating
could i leave you then
with some blurry vision of me
with some frame of reference
that you've constructed playing over and over
in your forehead
like a carousel, and only in the eyes of you
and only the emotion
the alcohol in me
singes the tip of my tongue
enflames my throat my lungs
but are not the strangers in me
are not my strangers
you in your pointed shoes and
me in my white and blue dress
we could be sitting on the edge of nowhere
but we still can't see it coming
and you say that we smell human
and i fixate on childbirth wondering
when i began to know myself.
i extended a leather hand
to graze a charcoal stained finger
over your cheekbone
and the streetlight casts the color
that is the yellow of a six day old bruise
that never completely heals.