Une fois que je su qui j’étais

It unspools at her feet,
a late night sky, clouds risen,
of ribboned fabric.

Names and titles stitched
line by line, needle-pricked
fingers spilling blood,
infusing the weave,

Your name, caught up in there.
Mine entwined with it,
curving behind and along,
shaped like lovers –
shaping a tree embracing another –
roots and branches wrapping
shoots and leaves that tremble,
touch
fall

Now, give rise again –
to her eyes trace lyric,
her reading fingers, their manic passage –
tracing songs that cannot ever be sung…

Whispering names
that can never come together,
save in some fevered stitching,
sliding
on darkened sheets,
where fingers clutch and beat,
tear and wrap.

Where names and cries wrap
like branches.
like leaves.
like writhing trees,
bending together in the night.

-martin burns