Loose Ends

You take my hand -- we light a candle.

"When I was a little girl, my mother would do this with me. And I remember looking up at all those saints -- so enormous! -- looking at me from the stained glass..."

Above the church, God moves His hands and writes words for me to see in the flame and projected in shadows against the wall. I move my lips and look up at you.

"Do you know, Michael, how long it's been since I've done this?" The lights in your eyes flare and shine. "It must be, oh... thirty... thirty-five years..."

I picture you as a little girl. I close my eyes and we are walking through the cemetary, just like before: you are showing me where your mother was buried, and your aunts and uncles, and your house across the way on Poet's Corner. We are holding hands. The sky is a enormous window of blue. Outside the cemetary cars rush by, tumors are born and discovered, a meat-packing truck takes a left--

"Where do you go, sometimes?" you ask. You hand is on mine and I smell a thousand feelings, hear thoughts from miles away. I don't pull away but ride time to other tomorrows, match distant years like yarn, weave a life from life and let go...

"You know, I think you--" You stop. "I think must have the purest thoughts. I really do." You stop. "Sometimes-- sometimes I picture you like those saints, I do, I swear: I picture you in white robes, healing with your sweet hands."

"Come touch me."

Outside the cemetary poems are written and thrown out. Someone tries to tell the truth, stars are born and die, the meat-packing truck is backing up like beep beep beep and all the universe ripples in agreement. Inside you are a little girl, and when we kiss you taste like something new. "Listen," I say. "Listen."


I will keep saying it.



-amr-