Often I love her as
she loves me: a study, here
is how much one can
here's when the other
can't,
fierce
rally of affections,
unequal like keeping
watch, attention to the heave
before the stroke. How we love
the fiction of the girls
with the lamps, Lydia taking
after the half that spends
the day doing, tending
to the visible, movement
resisting the progress
of patience, onward as
if to say, blessed be the narrative!
(while the rest
store up oil, an alert
huddle around the jar, measuring
the transparent flow into hard
clay mouths, such useless
providence, in their minds).
Summer mid-afternoon. Something's wrong
with the ceiling fan. In-between
clothes hung-dry and sundown. Side by side
at the foot of the stairs, bored bronze gods.
Somewhere, the faint caw of a macaw.
Lydia decides to shave my legs to move time forward. She stretches
my legs out on her thighs.
Lukewarm basin of soapy water,
elbow on my ankles like strap,
her self-possession,
and the razor.
It is never the stroke.
