the sudden virgin --

I tore you from my heart, I littered you

on the stairs like so much sand, here, stinking in

the summer heat, breathing shallow, I occurred to you

like one not primed or yet expectant,

like one who stalls, surprised,

one who will only give the order

when the corpse is already fed to the

earth, you, the visioned one, there on the rooftop,

gazing,

hellbent and stillborn,

sutured and succored, I could begin

to see things as they were, what it would be

if we moved up the ladder

and across the ice, here, sucking

hard at this teat,

bleeding more than necessary, gone into the

rapture of alchemical embrace, this our solace,

this our pain -- and wouldn't you stand there, tears in

your eyes, darting amongst branches,

willows and elms, lofty heavings of shattered glass,

this,

the only way in out of the rain --

when the cut one cries but is alone,

one step up, one step out,

this, the revolving fission

of an intense conjoined disclosure --

how about the way in which it stops, is

ground to nothing, the end of all things,

the scent of it all,

all this borrowed magic, I see it here,

when you stop and smile,

almost alive . . .