You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen Afraid of how you might fail yourself your dress seven summers old is kept open in memory of sex, smells warm, of boys, and of the once long grass. But we are colder now; we have not Love’s first magic here. You come to me Quiet as bulbs not yet broken Out into sunlight.

The fear I see in your now lining face Changes to puzzlement when my hands reach For you as branches reach. Your dress Does not fall easily, nor does your body Sing of it won accord. What love added to A common shape no longer seems a miracle. You come to me with your age wrapped in excuses And afraid of its silence.

Into the paradise our younger lives made of this bed and room Has leaked the world and all its questioning and now those shapes terrify us most that remind us of our own. Easier now to check longings and sentiment, to pretend not to care overmuch, you look out across the years, and you come to me quiet as the last of our senses closing