And many nights later, awake, I waited
waited for understanding. Waited while the pulse
banged badly, the compound pressure of desultory enthusiasms
having done its work where no work will now be done.
Waited while the brain dreamed unspeakable dreams
and climaxed in fits that left the body exasperated.

You knew the panic at the shore, the urge to jump
off a precipice as large as your heart. I remember
the winking motel, mounting games of heat and endurance.
There were empty wirehangers.
There were casters on the legs of the bed.
You moved across a mirror and disappeared at its edge.

History contained us as we contain
an idea of pleasure, or of love:
something to agitate and dissect before death.
History ends at the decline of sympathy,
when light meets shadow on a wall designed
in the absence of everything but remorse.