Afterlove
A thousand ships to get here,
I sent messengers to plead with you
across an ocean
I sent desire. When nothing returned
I sent the pale-handed
harbinger of war.
You faltered.
Hope’s stiff carriers crowded
my rooms, an army
of competing clatter
and rust.
In the leftover
quiet
wind too slight to lift the hair from my neck,
I saw there was something still
for each of us to want.
Gulls dispersed, white
above the roofline, so white
I could not tell
one from the other, nor one
from the sky.
