He held her. She was sad.
And nothing could disguise
the mist upon her eyes.
Yet every way he spoke
seemed only to evince
the sense that something bad
had happened in her night.
The room was full of light;
it settled on the flowers
beside their bed, the sheets
illumined by the sun.
He knew of all the powers
beyond what he could see:
the current of her dreams
wherein she had been whirled,
for hours tossed and churned.
“I love you,” he might say,
but she would turn aside
and bite her lip to chide;
the most he could provide
was skin against her skin
and silence like the moss
that covers with green fur
the sharpest, rasping ledge
in time. She wept alone,
an island in the creek
of all his running love.
By noon, when they had slept
an hour past her tears,
they went outside. Her fears
had blown off like a fog
from that disconsolate shore.
They walked, now hand in hand,
and nothing more was said.
It was as if the dead
had somehow been subdued,
at least until that dark
came down on her again.