I want to reach over and move you so your smoky odor of crushed grape cannot drift around me, but I cannot stop watching the smear of candlelight reflected on your ruby belly, bright as the hourglass marking the black widow I killed in my toolshed this summer. Once I loved your mystery uncoiling on my tongue, the dark and gleaming veins you opened there. And I loved your earthy cousin, beer, the one who bears the brassy accent of wheatfields, and your sullen friends bourbon, scotch, and rum who might end the party singing sad Irish songs or smashing furniture and beating the host. But what I loved, finally, was the blackness you brought, the stars dying one by one. I kissed you good-bye long ago. Still, when I see mouths purse with meeting you, see the dim coal of an eye suddenly waken, I recall your first kindlings, blood-glow I could believe for the length of your burning