To leave you is like waking, or refusing to wake,
in that way the body has of haunting itself.
Returned to your hand, I’m the astronomer
unable to lower his telescope, or look away.
You’re the telescope, too. Close, you show me
far reaches that are themselves not even the beginning.
Not to be the one who left is to live in an alarm.
The unstraightened bed.
But don’t I always bring bright souvenirs from our travels,
a feather, a coin, a bee? Astonishing in my palm.
Minutes past your touch, what our bodies were
is disappearing like a ship caught in polar ice,
covered up, compressed into deep. To leave you
is where the icicles fall, the fog we wake to.