Want is an honest word.

I wanted to bury my face

inside of her neck.

Wanted to disappear there.

To become neither woman nor beast,

but some third thing

yet each night I fled from her.

Not because I loved her too little.

For the moon understood.

 face agape above us.

 A wound refusing to close.

And she

sweet mortal,

soft inhabitant of clocks

would ask why I seemed sad.




How could I explain?




There are corridors
where dead girls wander
wearing my face.




I am not lonely.

I am crowded.




At night,
I would imagine placing my hand
against her sleeping chest.

Not to possess her.

But to count.

One 

     heartbeat.

                      Then another.

                                          Then

                                                                                                                     another.




The impossible mathematics
of something that ends.