6.26.2020

in the flesh. All night

I want to touch her.
Once. Again. I will wait
if I must. Outwait.
Wait so long she will age,
pull even, pass. How
will she like it then if 
when I bend to kiss wrinkles
ray out around her 
mouth? I want to hold her.
In the flesh. All night.
Flesh like the bright
puffs the flower-god
puts on in spring, flimsy
for needing to last
but this one flashing
circuit through her
apparitions. Did she fear,
when I stood with the
precipice at my back
and beckoned, that I was a specter
she would plunge through?
At the agape love's addict's
lie back, drink, listen
to a priestess discourse
on love rightly understood.
As soon as cured anyone
can get up and go over
and bestow the Kiss
on anyone. Now the others
have disappeared--maybe 
cured, probably joining lips
behind doors. It is
the Fourth Cup--the hour
for the breaking of the
transubstantiated body.
What if we break, the priestess
and I, the body
together? And I fall
in fear and longing? And
she commands me to 
dissolve in the light
of love rightly understood,
or if I can't, to put 
a gun to my head? I don't want
to know that on the other
side of the pillow nobody
stirs. I don't want ever
again to sit up half the night
and laugh and forget not
all of us will rejoice 
like this always.

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