but February was never endless,
the held breath shaky
in the cavernous wait,
our pupils opening like
church doors at the
lavender of morning,
we were tender when
we were outlasting,
weren’t we?
Remember the first
Pittsburgh morning, jostled
you from the dark to
bear witness to my breaking,
spilling myself across the page
between chapters, and
again in Manchester I shook you
to steal another hour together,
overlap our limbs and revel
in some nonsensical hour,
the knowing came quiet
and ridiculed all the
thunderstorm romances before.
If I’ve loved you, I have
the perfect story of your joy,
can light you up in the minds
of strangers, beautiful, ephemeral,
human, I dutifully usher a sparkle
of delight, a swell of pain, lovely,
by habit a fastidious keeper, hoarding
every detail of anybody who
made one of these days worthwhile,
flowering constantly in the rain, wind,
and fire of all these nights
their constant surrender to morning.
michael king 