I fell into the bed and grazed his cheek
and everything became shadow
underneath the covers—
second motions,
second sensations,
as each flex and quiver
echoed through our skin
down into the muscles…

There is no color in contact,
only the subtle shade and smell
as heat frees the chemistry
trapped between the pores…
…then, the crucible,
the stretched flame
that pierces that dome where you feel like
you’re enclosed within a body…

After the machinery sputters and halts
and the twin factory cools and metal cools
and skin cools beneath the cotton-polyester blend,
the shadows forged in desire-iron
linger, glow, radiate
until the shadow of time
finally steals over the bed
like a giant quenching wave,
a wave only so bold as to pass
through the spent ruins of a moment…

I feel like I could dissolve
into nothing but these shadows
and that trace of heat pregnant in time now passed,
and now that we’re talking of shadows,
and now that we’re talking about a double-part,
and now that over a decade has passed,
in the tide pools of our bedroom,
at what point does the figure recede
into the shadow?

Hiroshima—

where the shadows burned in place
and I could say love is like that
I and would, except,
unlike an American holocaust that sears the sky
love contains grace,
love contains mercy,
love contains a shadow’s subtly, and its shade…