Our bodies grew younger, pliant, light,
like the ten winds or cotton wool,
changeless and radiantly luminous.
“We will be separated for just a moment.”
When I looked over my shoulder
a dense mist where there had been coral and turquoise.
Your words were lies to me but not to you,
a promise incompletely informed,
as we are when we make a vow, in earnest or the moment,
all alloy of desire and blindness, suspended,
all wish embedded in the apotropaic,
the way the figure waits in clay, cooling slowly,
assuming he will be released back to daylight,
intact, by clearing parties or skilled craftsmen.
My body may have felt like a lie to you but not to me,
although there were lights in the dark air,
falling slowly, illuminating the ground below
where everything had stopped moving.
When I looked over my shoulder
the dense mist separated for just a moment
and there were our bodies,
changeless and radiantly luminous.
Your words begin to sound younger, pliant, light,
like the ten winds moving into the present.
When I look over your shoulder I see
the ground as an alloy of fire and blindness,
that we are separated for just a moment, and a dense mist
in which we are again coral and turquoise.