transit of venus

no sleep. there is nothing sinister in the air, but in me the cool, calm shadow of some beast, some fauve, some wild thing, haunts. your shadow maybe, or the darker cast in my white sheets where your body does not lie. i lash like a tongue, mute. my body, silky and dry in the night, a tearless cry more akin to a death rattle than a stifled orgasm. consciousness runs its long fingers over my hollow places.

i draw my hands up my thighs, over the soft mound of my pubis, up through the sternum's path between my breasts, these too sunk in preparation for absent sleep. my fingers keep moving, they run  up my neck and tangle into my hair. my fingers stuck, i stare down the first glow of dawn illuminating the window and its frame and the red brown curtains. close my eyes, like a door that will never open again, i loved you once and you failed me-- my hands still in my hair, my body still in its skin,  and the night, slipping away too fast. i didn't mean it, come home, come lay with me and draw me into your folds of translucent and opaque, of your blacks and greys.

this afternoon, venus crossed the sun. it may not happen again in my lifetime, who knows. we were only supposed to observe with special glasses through which passes hardly any light. in the cafe, in the neighborhood, couples unite and split, burn hotter or burn away. if you have enough oxygen to feed this then burn on. a forest of hands reaching out for just a graze on the cheek of the un-had thing.

i stay away from you and only approach when you ask. i leave wide rivers of cool air between us, open and deep. i don't call, i write minimally. i pin a note to the inside of your jacket on the back of a foreign stamp, found in a second hand shop. send you off away somewhere with expired postage in unknown currency. but you are here. your flesh does not fade. your promise is just a promise. my longing draws up tall and opens itself, flushing. rose colored and raw. i stand with my feet in the cool currents that we've drawn around us like a bathwater, a recipe for comfort. my new freedom, i see your hand in this.

the curtains of my window stay open, pointing out at the place on the horizon where water should be. fisherman's woman, nightgowned silhouette with her fingers resting on the cool glass, her hot breath smudged in the figure of a jellyfish or maybe the human heart, who yawns into the distance with her far-seeing eyes and who goes to bed only when the view is completely occluded by the warmth of her sighs and the depth of the darkness.

the sun is going down, i want to love you and not be afraid.