Dark chaotic scarcity streched palpably, thick and ravenous.

The gulf yawns, beckons, and cajoles in silence.

And then the room begins to glow…

We wept there in those days

and laughed, shared secrets, and the dark warm air became our medium.

Every fiber in that ratty carpet held a story we scrawled recklessly.

As if the world were waning we made love,

and every time as passionately as if it were our last.

I died many deaths over and again there,

days when you were distant,

nights when I hid within myself as

all the half empty water glasses gathered dust,

and the laundry tumbled out the hamper’s cusp like avalanche.

We lingered in our bodies, but we’d lost each other and

ourselves somewhere in the motions and rhythms.

Yet,

as every famine waned we found each other once again.

And every time your image on my mind

impressed itself more clearly.

I wondered briefly how happiness could

hurt like this,

before I just appreciated being home.

Kind years, fat years, desparate years—

our children born and bred and brought up

amid the magic and mundane.

I saw you there in every mess they ever made.

We were children then ourselves, as we had never yet been

together. We played with them in dappled summer afternoons,

all before they grew and one day

left us.

Now we settle down and try to

find some course of action that might occupy our minds

as our bodies can’t keep pace.

Kind years, fat years, desparate years—

as we dwindle in the hearth:

two embers warm each other, staving

off the dying of the light.

It’s been such a lovely…