it was at that moment (desire in a time of absence)

it was at that moment (desire in a time of absence)

“Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling.

Her lips began to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move.”

Franny, J. D. Salinger

“drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates

woke dreamers to their ghostly roots. . .

because my father lived his soul

love is the whole and more than all”

[my father moved through dooms of love], e. e. cummings

it was at that moment

a nondescript second silent as fingertips tracing a collar bone

churning up through her email

about last night’s dream of lions deer hunted and flooding

like a Salvador Dali painting

rising from the pages of an apocalyptic Faulkner novel

it was at that moment

burying him in the instantly past blink of thought

that he craved the curve of her knee

to brush his face against inhaling deeply the smell of her

believing that his rush of desire

could conjure her from the memory of her ribs beneath his palm

•

his was a life in outline

the space inside the chalkline

at a murder scene or children’s drawings on a sidewalk

but the fullness of her

standing there in his mind’s eye

short black robe loosely tied exposing neck to breastbone

as she planned the things

she would wear as carefully

as clipping a baby’s tiny tiny fingernails that first time

this is what filled him in to the edges

filled him up with living and believing

blood bone and oxygen like desire in a time of absence

•

absence is a thing defined against that which is

the distance between that can (should) be travelled

the time lived past and lost that stands like marble

the absence now against the memory and longing

sometimes alone in a room filled with artificial light

he closes his eyes to create the darkness of solitude

and clings to memory

like dreams of lions deer hunted and flooding