Your hair was beachrocks
covered in lichen. Seawater
coursed your forehead circled
your crown left salt—
white and flakey wakes
of peaks and troughs.
Your eyes were cloudy. Too much
late November coastal weather.
If you had picked up
your thick face
perhaps you could have lifted the dark
night’s violent firework
of dreams stuck in the fleshy folds
of your red cheeks,
and below your brow I
would have seen miles
from me shrouded in a glass
and light-filled pastel apartment, past
reflection melted inside cirrus curves.
I’ll not see what you’ve seen.
Nor me, you. Counting this you can’t
burn war out.
I’ve brushed against this,
felt its rough pelt, burned bright
with its fevered pulse.
Known destruction
become the last single affirmation.
If you had picked up your eyes
the sparrow would have flown out of my breast
Over the osmanthus tree
all out of war.