After Midnight Six Years Later

This is the first poem I've recorded in 2007.

After Midnight

It's after midnight on the sixth year after you inaugerated
the shattering of my heart, and I'm not thinking about the way
you held me in the palm of your long-fingered hand nor looking
for those letters I saved somewhere in a cardboard box,
but rather realizing how murdering the memory of you

didn't quite end the sense of your breath in my ear
nor your stroking of my leg that night before the taxi came
and took you permanently away from me.

You'll never know the way you lived in my cells . . .
Nor the way I used to gaze at the stars to feel close to you--
same stars, same old moon tonight -- reminding me

how small and alone I am, no one filling my pores
with hot, yearning music, no one carrying me
where I've never been before nor wanting to jump the fence
into my yard . . . Oh, this holy life in an expanding universe

where it's after midnight on the eve of a fading dream
of the impossible. I'm learning, at least, to sleep eyes open,
although I still sleep naked as if I were immune to the cold . . .

This body eclipsed so long, it's as though the world's turned dark.
And now the languid stretch of limbs, wanting the feel
of anything . . . even if just feeling my textured, soft skin.

(c)2007  Binnings ALL RIGHTS RESERVED