Reading You

Cold comfort (How cold my toes-tiddely-pom…)

to read you when I’d rather have you —

to have you, god forbid, then leave you.

Lying here, alone (And nobody knows)

surprised by love — that little time, sweet

poised measure, one table-spoon of, say it,

nectar, taken by a humming-bird in sips —

for us, one gulp of sudden joy.

Reading you, alarmed at every turn you take

each time you pass along my nerve ends’

reckoned memory of things we’ve never done,

I want to shout, “Stop writing over all the moments,

undo this cursor, cursed time’s sharp quill —

oh, dance with me, stand still.” This hold

you hold me in should never end— it never will.