Your long arms antlered on the Goth-rude fireplace,
a frame ample and worthy of your wingspread …
whatever we say is for our hearts alone—
the first confidence of our two souls at school,
now seasoned with retrospective mercy.
Some meaning never has a use for words,
truth one couldn’t tell oneself on the toilet,
self-knowledge swimming to the hook, then turning—
in Latin we learned no subject is an object.
“You say you’ll remarry, you can’t take none or two.…
All this makes me think of one thing, you,
at your age … think of it, it’s the one big item
on your agenda—Do you really want
to live in the same room with anyone?”