After the Call

Unlike the way best days
Slowly shed their splendor,
Perhaps our bones do not forget.
Not our ribs, our shy shins, our
Treacherous fingers-
Perhaps these things thrive
Inchoate, promising,
Until time stays them still.

Our bodies, year-bitten. They say
Love softens you. Bruised fruit,
Monstrous loving thing.
Our same eyes, lodged stone
Safe, the ones which traversed
The harsh reeds of childhood,
Casually glazing over,
Growing to scale. So it was
My left hand that left you.

This hand, which
On a doll’s collar
Invented velvet, which
For curdling afternoons light-
Years long, fixated on
That gripped-warm, grass-
Green marble. Blown
To be lost, I remember it
Still- intransigent, violently
Sound: I could not contain it.