We resist each other with words, or wordlessly
avert our eyes when tenderness
is too much to bear the wanting
heart to be only muscle. As if
this were a question of strength,
the answer of your eyes, and language,
one wing flying into itself, some bird we drive up
that feigns to draw us away from its nest.
Better the argument of axe and wood,
the rush of the stove, your face
barbarous in firelight. Always
the same stranger struggling from
your clothes, your eyes no longer
fists but hands. So many nights of gauge
and grapple, this hesitance to go
beyond our bodies. Outside the wind
bearing what it can’t contain, erasure,
the rain shifting to snow. Better the white
at the windows, the space we enter
between words, this winter
country we’ve come to, settling
for the closeness we can.
—Jerah Chadwick