oblation #2 (rev 2)

The April rain you wake to puts a chill in everything, the cold red brick and the concrete, the windowpanes and coffee cups, and memory’s residence where we exist as if our crimes didn’t matter, all of our theories saying this is not what I bargained for, the heart stopping for entire moments out of love for another, the bells at sundown calling the Angelus as we sat on the dock when everything seemed possible, and I understand now that plainly I have held you, and plainly I have let go, while my days, fully examined in efficient self-hatred, release their tall echo. I am so lightly here but so acutely there. Where do we continue living now? What if this is the place, not a chosen place but one we blundered into? Nothing can stem the steady acceleration of the past, not even sleep that draws the restless, dissatisfied body into fall and winter, not even the distance between the new moon above and the text below, not even that we are as still as glass in the picture my sister took of us, a yesterday we find almost impossible to lift.