And Then

the man remembers your body,

remembers to love you again,

flicks you like a switch

waiting, ready

in the room’s shadows.

Loneliness rises from each

reclaimed centimeter,

a humiliating eagerness

rushing you like a hound

loosed in woods, your cry

like baying or keening,

months of waiting become sound.

After, the man sleeps, peaceful,

but you are a door he’s opened,

a path grown over now beaten

back down. You feel his life,

which will end before yours,

slide slowly away into the dark.

“And Then” first appeared in B O D Y.