Existing Places

Still we are in the room. The autumn morning sun shines through the curtainless window. The buds of the carpet’s garden opened beneath our steps. The sturdy arm of the walnut tree holds the spotless mirror in its embrace. Still we are in the mirror: leaf in the arms of leaf, with the warm ivy of our breaths on each other’s face. The golden waterfall of the sun pours over our bodies with the sound of the light’s joyful running barefoot across the carpet’s meadow. The bright autumn light shines on us. It shines on us, turns back, gleams more fiercely in the mirror of our house. Your fingertips slide into my braided hair, they take out my hairpin, they let my braid fall over my shoulder, with the sound of a butterfly’s two wings, with the sound of your breaths, on my trembling lips. Still in the room we are. In the mirror we are. In the green forest of walnut we are. The golden waterfall of the sun shines on us, on our long kiss. It did not turn to smoke. It was not destroyed. It was not lost, our constellation. In the room we are still — behind the bloody border — my love. We are in the deep mirror of the walnut tree, in the long kiss of leaf on the open mouth of leaf.