God and I have made our peace.
He stays on his side of the bed,
me on mine, doesn’t comment when

I steal the sheets again.
He is a gentleman. I am not

gentle, nor a man. Instead
I love like an American:
selfish and right.

They tell you you’re not in love, but you are.
Isn’t it terrible? To love so selfishly, so
completely, is the opposite of love, they say.
But you know the truth.
It is all there is.

You think you know death, but you don’t.
You’ve read all the books, studied your Plath
and Goethe and the Brontes that matter,
but not from beneath the heavy blanket of sorrow.
You believe you won’t live to see 30
but that your father will live forever,
his Superman heart racing on.
But it will stop. You still
grieve for lost moments
without knowing why.

You are not unhappy, not yet.
That will come in time. Breathe
now, while you are invincible.
While there is nothing
to expect.

Beside you I mimic the sea,
all tides and currents

washing away silt and sandbar.
I am set off by moons,

the light drowning scent of salt
that covers our skins.

There is an empty nest in me.
Each day I add to it.
Paper, twigs, string: I weave them with moss.
It is a shell, shallow and wide.
Inside I store rings of amber and glass
scavenged from the black road.

Last night I plucked the blue from your eyes.
Then I embroidered the nest. Far above the jays sang,
their cries circling the edges of me,
one not of their own.

He says a coelacanth stirs
each moment we’re alone,
long and slow: something old
below the surface, timeless,
unknown. I am present,

I think,
as he speaks of long-ago
extinctions, fossils
dug with fingers smudged
in dirt. I experience
him similarly, spiral
ammonites of past lovers
hiding beneath the hard
sedimentary layers, only
my skeleton knowing

death is rediscovery.