I wake before you and in the darkness,
I don’t recognize you right away.
Your lashes bring their own light,
full like fields of crows,
a murder of crows. The birds nested
on the hill I’m sure I’ve told you about
in front of the tomb, white stones holding
each other like people huddled in a storm.
It reminds me of us again, where I’m
holding your hand in the airport and
theorizing about the birth of the floor tiles.
You’re going along with it, saying the
dark spots in the stone cement are the
parts of space that flaked away
when the earth became what it is
because space is dark, you say. I laugh
but I can’t stop thinking about our darkness,
the room filling with each of us.
You know exactly how to hold me to you,
curling me up like smoke from a fire. We are
divided when we learn to fly, but I have broken
my wings for you. I weave my fingers into yours,
and you whisper about how we’ve learned about
space, the fabric of stars clustering around us
in empty homes. There are white stones in the
airport tile, too. I’d like to think they mimicked
the bed sheets, soft and glowing like us and ready
for sleep.