reach fever pitch in their grass tunnel where the railroad
tracks run like a spine, and in the end
it matters only that the path
between my door and yours was worn
threadbare, and sitting together your knee
pressed against mine. There was nowhere else for my hand
to rest. Let’s forget in this murmuring river of black
legs singing that you ever said no to anything I asked,
and again, again, the repeating teeth of the tracks,
my hand laid against your spine, the fall
of your hair on my collarbone, how you said, No
I am not a body, and every time the train rages
through you are there, the ledge of your knee
and the flower of my hand spread over it, an answer
to the question in the dark, Are you here, Are you there?
When the train looks with its one bloodshot eye in the rage
and rattle, are you still listening for me?
Sometimes you wake thinking you hear me crying,
or laughing, but you know I am no longer
a body. The summer is hot with stars
and the rain still drips from strands of grass after
the train breathes distantly, the crickets laughing in its wake.
The summer of, the summer of
my death is the crickets, the grass, the bridge
where you lay your hand. Are you here,
Are you there?