Slowing an Aperture of the Heart

After Jean Valentine

His eyes will not close as he cuts through every part of you.

What did you expect? Keeping to my room. He is so fundamentally

kind. The time-dulled ghost phrase middle. Of a kind, which is a group of likes.

He is one of a kind. Of murdered god. The space between tick and tock

we had not yet named, We don’t say anything much, We love to count

human silences. A bed, a woman, a man, our lives, a cubic centimeter of bone.

A journey animated up in a quiet room. You were struck by the injunction: compose yourself.

We were in a small town with barely any money.

We were hungry. We went out most nights. It was hot.

We walked past the Goodyear. Silent glass saying nothing.

Saying everything that has been put away. I heard your steps in a group I like.

Your hand, my hand, vapors clinging together rising together also

apart. Pink sky. We were late and early to like a spring flower in October. Kind of.

Saying what did you expect? Dream: you without a face. I forgot your face,

We spoke as if, of how, we were in bed, adding a kind is a group of likes.

Collected many sounds coming to our senses. Cold certainties. Slower lenses.

Regard a glass, you felt it’s silence held your voice. A crystal glass of water

trapped in a storm. Underwater it is never quiet. In space it is always silently recurring.

The dream: a blind girl perfectly tuning a piano. In the bone-shadowed depth, you toss the glass

into the wind. Frosted glass of cool fire, folding air. My body too will evaporate

like that, in a hissing second, an empty cup but I’ll live on. That will have to do. And I’ll

let you go as if I could choose.