phases

phases

Now I have to check

because think I’m wrong

about the whereabouts
of the moon,

how maybe it wasn't her
light spread out

over your face after all
or how she hadn't given out

against the grey

clapboard of the neighbor’s

foreclosed house

in a windy night

of twigs and branches that make

like they’re a movie

that shake and tremble and I think

 maybe I’ve come in

at the wrong time,

haven’t earned the scene

you know?

How the ones who sat down

early even before

the opening credits and walked

their jaw muscles through

every beat

every tripped wire

every fist of hair

or cheek

and they’re sad

in all the right spots

delighted in all

the right spots

pissing shit this is mad

in all the right palces

but they’re expecting

it they’re paused

on the knob

of the girl’s belly

before she gives birth

and I’m the only one

not crying when the baby's

too blue

too grey

too mute

and I’m not the one limping

home with the bloody lip

black eye moral

of the story

when the guy cleans up his son

and lays her on the girl

just then giving up

her placenta.  It’s all

from those limbs, that cast

on the black night

that I saw it,

that movie

and only then at a glance

not enough my day’s gonna change

thinking these things.

But then,

there’s this block

of letters

and they make it

through

to the finish

maybe without shoes

maybe without anything

like shirts or pants

maybe just because

I thought I saw

the moon on your face

and it wasn’t that at all

it was something else

something raw
but soft, something fingers
ease into
knowing water
knowing light
knowing,
even afraid
in the dark,
me.