She slips out of time
as easily as silk,
making visitations
like a holy pilgrimage.
I follow clumsily,
fumbling with buttons.
I am so tightly laced
in flesh and bone.
Drawn with her by
her drawing eyes,
two lighted windows
in a wintered face,
I glimpse a trace
of unnamed color,
feel it stir in me.
Her voice,
as if the years
like scales
were dropped away,
unwraps a melody
as clean and tender
as a newgreen sprout.
I let it play in me.
And then she sighs
as if landing,
roots her knotted fingers
round my wrist,
curls into sleep.
I gather in these bits
if undone time and
knit them into me,
knowing one day soon
we'll only find
her body,
vacant as a snakeskin
or a spent cocoon,
left here upon the bed.
-- Deb Cooper