I could write
a book
of simply
punctuation marks
all about
your pink ears,
(slightly fuzzed
when the light’s put
behind them)
the soft-skin
kind of ears
you can
see straight
through
when the light’s put
behind them.

And it hurts
one small me inside
to think
of your
yearning
alongside
for the other,
always the other.
As you’ve
supposed
perhaps we
are always alongside, chasing
in order to
make light
of how
terrible is
the
keeping.

And though
you hide your face
I can
see straight through
your cloven paw
to see the
slight slits
where eyeballs
are, should be, were
shining.
How breathtaking
and how so
poignant your
sibilant whispers are
across my thin—almost
white—translucent
ears (just
round and regular
not pointed ears
like yours).

At the end,
we’re pulling up chairs,
the sounds scraping, echoing
across the wooden room and
we’re all full up of
drinks we’re
downing even after drowning
in too much to night before.
Here there is
no need to
scrape or
speak softly
because
nobody knows
you or me.
(Not by sight.)
When at
the end of the end
you depart
from me
with your days full ahead
of important
Things To Do,
meaningful, contextual paintings
to paint
(that will pull
the words
right from
our center
and chase them into
being)
I am
at last
not sad.