The Pact
A secret place was all the note said
of where to meet. I chose the
woods I walked
the time I lost the key to my
house,
returning to find a stranger
asleep
on my bed, who woke to say
sorry, he got tired
while waiting. Since then I’ve
been writing,
letting the phone ring, dropping
my friends.
The work grew like a child
between
my daylight hours, a nine-month
seal
of shared blood, melted in the
wax
of a waning flame that tapered
to a scrawl
I knew as mine, telling me go tonight.
The figure in liquid silhouette
stepped from the sky between a
symmetry
of silver birch, quiet as the
morning star.
Held in the split and dawn-red
eyes
I felt the kiss of a voice on my
throat
sing through my skin with the
touch of the air.
I don’t know how long I was
weightless
in the promise of those words.
They
thinned to silence as the sky
paled.
I stretched in the darkened sun,
mindful
of what would be waiting in my
empty house,
whether it would return this
greater loss.
from The Fetch (Nine Arches Press, 2016)
