Like someone carrying a tidal wave, silently
rebuking those unburdened
or those who break their silence
                                                  the day I see her again
I’ll see expectations, not hope – narrow jaw, broad
shoulders, flat plain of her breasts, fat hips,
a thermometer not a thermostat.
 
I’ll say ––I don’t want her any more––. Do I desire anything now
that we don’t need fire to brighten us?
 
My fingertips will remember how to key in her pores
we’ll do it with a sea view, though we used to do it in the sea
and in the rain, kneeling in the street, outside the peaches, inside
the cable car, mouth down on a pyramid’s table. A series
of postcards dissolved in water, album prints, delivery dockets:
 
the drop of Chinese torture     digs innocent into the
prisoner’s forehead    a death-cave.     A drop of water.
It’s Muñoz who repeats the sentence     her glass trembling
at the touch of other hands     ––the Chinese torturer’s member
digs innocent into the     prisoner’s pubis,
a death-cave––     a four-hour film,
the couple seated, their legs tied     examining the wall.
A pebble guards the lack of clay.
 
Not thirst-quenching, my darling, desire won’t fill the body of
this bottle, or only for a while. An empty, wide-necked
vessel, wrapped in bags or sealed with lids. Sealed with
lids, yes, that collect along with myriad screw tops in the bin.
I remain alone, a non-returnable vessel.
                                                              She’ll wait for me if I am la-
tely I’ve been stalling since she came
and I’ll come to realise: by delaying I perpetuate her
as long dresses or years of denial
perpetuate desire.
The sea above and the sky below. A city is burned
or abandoned, ashes coming through the roof.
She stands and the trembling lake is covered with petals: a carpet
where the shore lays its head, our names the only reminder
we used to be them. Desire won’t fill this bottle,
only seal it like a bag or a lid.
 
Bartering away desire (the colour of chewing a cherry,
tasting, crushing, sounds similar
two one-way tickets)
for the relief of seeing the first light on a dark motorway
(we’ll do it with a sea view, though we used to do it in the sea).
 
A light but not a terminus, the buses speed by without me,
terminally pondering how old loves no longer exist,
because loved-ones change.
 
But lovers don’t.