Your face fades into the fog of dreamscape
as I reach across the bed to still the resonant sound
of morning come too quickly.
The day between us was a
middle-passage between death and life;
Christ’s descent to the dead, and
freeing of every soul but mine.
By the time my feet touch the floor
I feel the familiar emptiness, in
my throat, in
my belly—
another sober Saturday—
schooling me the differing textures, of
pain-avoidance and pleasure, of
thirst and gluttony, of
love and lust,
want and need.
I want you close, both
in the nearness, and in the
spaces in-between.
But I need you as you are,
wherever you are,
whoever you are.
Sobriety is a prayer, divining
satisfaction with what is—
in the stillness and silence
of oneself where there is nothing
else to be with but me.
