Fracture

I've seen already how I could hate your thin mouth,
the ragged teeth of the story a glass shard, a memory scar—

I have not yet learned to let time bear weight like a healed bone.
And the narrative is never linear,

the convoluted edges of other and self, that radius of wanting—
how expendable we become, how superfluous to each other's lives,

with our simple human dependence on signs and omens
balanced like birds legging single stalks of grass in the hayfield,

wreathing the supernatural like a ring around the moon,
something we can approach but never address,

something we wait for, not the light but a diffusion of the light—
how we look with indulgence on ourselves, our simple human wants and weaknesses,

your shoulders worn to the thin blades of a child's
that I would cover as if they are shameful,

if I could wedge my hands to that omen of bone
without breaking them, if I knew I could have them back.

Copyright © 2009 Leslie Adams All rights reserved
from Cimarron Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission