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[from December 2019]

I touched your face last night
And as you half-dreamed, I played a game
Familiar to me by now:
Wondering when I would have been surprised
To know things would be thus.
Perhaps you would not have been so eager to have me join you otherwise --
Spiriting me to the sluice
Past which we pass to our patent places
More regular than pageant
I am eleven again
Stealing corner-eye glances at you
Unsure why you are so beautiful
Or rather, how
Though now, I merely wonder what curse or blessing
Has allowed me so close to my unconsidered desire
What unuttered prayer may have persuaded genii or divinity
To, in humor, allow me to
Uncomprehendingly know the shade of your eyelids
The ridges of your nose
The length and smoothness of your fingernails.
Things are not as they were
But here we pretend
They are as they might have been.

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