Last night we came together

in the skeleton of a church.

He smelled of warm tweed

and freshly sharpened pencils,

the love in his eyes so wonderfully naked

my breath hid like a nervous child

blushing under the breakfast table.

Oh, to wrap myself in miles of satin

and tumble backwards into his arms;

to feel his heart inside my ears

standing tiny hairs at keen attention.

But then to lose him … oh, to lose him

to nervous chatter and pickled secrets;

to feel him turn and with his high forehead

redirect the air.

So I take it slow as foreplay,

inside the bones of God,

until we know with each escaping breath

that we have come together

to quietly surrender to the journey of Forever.

Then the sun finds the dream underneath

my eyelids, finds it before it finds

the slats in my venetian blinds –

and in the cool green of early morning

leads me through the ritual

of ginger tea and rice cakes, then onward,

always onward to the clutter on my desk.

And as my brain rides the bright waves

of cyberspace, my heart searches in the echoes

for what might have been if we had met

before we’d married

other people’s children.