keep

It is a small sound, like a tiny engine running hot. It is a tender taste, like a shy kiss. Up all hours, listing your secrets. Shifting from thought to feckless thought. The fan blows, her voice just around the corner. Your hip aches, her hand once pressed there. Reading lamp haloed in aluminum and dust blurs and blinds depending on where you look. It’s what you keep while you’re keeping. It’s where you go when you’re gone.

The ceiling is buttered with spilled light, glasses cast smeared prism glints, remaindered ghosts of different days. Music plays so softly even the hour is unsure. Laid out like a school uniform flat on the comforter, laid out like a fighter who stepped into the hook. Pain wanders through your bare body like a sound check for every nerve. It either catches up with you, or it leaves you far behind. It depends a lot on what it it is.

Tell me your troubles in the dark and early hours. Stir my cinders with a text when you wake. It is all still here in between night and daylight. It lives in the itching of my skin, it lives it the sharp inside my heart. Finger prints and love’s savored labors. The counting of the cards when the deck is cracked. When you write down the bared teeth of your dreams. When you wonder what might have been. The children stirring in their slumbers. Your love wrapped tight in words and time. All the fine people waiting, waiting so hopefully for a glimpse. The light that follows when you go.