Between One Word
and the Next

Pull back the sheets
and feel my breath
against your neck-
my whispers in your ear
echoing your secrets
that linger in my mind.

You kiss the dust off my lips-
try to make me speak again,
but the words are louder in silence.

There is something terrible
in being alone together;
we are not gods to read
two lines at the same time.

Our world is filled with stains:
the windows of chapels tinted
with farewells and the search
for a missing father,
inkblots on pale hands,
the human element smeared

across a page- as if life
were a novel and we are waiting
for somebody to tell us
the end.