Published: May 1, 2008

I’m Sorry I Keep Talking About the Prehistoric Period While Thinking About the Apocalypse

but I need points of reference,

something more than what we’ll leave

behind,

frame after frame of a near-same face

getting sadder,

my words clumped together

like pebbles, and mud,

and it doesn’t matter which words

are which. Every night

I watch your spine coil itself a new

world, the strata

of your vertebrae

no older than the day,

and I’ve seen you

bent over tangled veins

of 16-millimeter film

like the surgical hand of God

cutting cleanly through the years

until the only things left

are what you choose

to remember. I know

what it looks like. I’ve seen you.

I’ve seen you forget. And I know

holding me is an earthquake,

shakes the tectonic plates

loose

from under

your skin,

white-fisted tsunamis

scattering our continents

until we don’t know

whose mountains are whose,

but when we sleep, my sinews empty

into your valleys

like hourglass sand, and

I trap my face in the amber

of your back. I want to stop

the process. I want to fill it,

that space. I want to stay.