little things

i.

do you remember then?

those viennese mornings

light and airy in the living room

reading poems to each other

as if to wipe away the dust of sadness

that accumulates in sleep

to hear you laugh or better

to try, a thing I could not fail to fall in love with

showing someone you love something you love

feeling they may one day love it too

feeling they may already do

and us just two americans

as the austrian sunlight filtered in through the double paned windows

first cold then unbearably hot

the trams incessant on the street below after the midnight pause

and a poem like an anchor

a gift given at the same time to each other

a little thing

and life is made of little things.

ii.

now I wake from dreams of you

where we never quite kiss on the mouth

and my eyes half-open come to the daylight

hungry for the fantasy of your body

for the fantasy of your mind knowing reality

never has and will live up to this

the true knowing of the dream kiss.

iii.

and you want it to be you don't you?

you had asked me

looking back on that moment 

I feel such full astonishment

even then I knew I was living

something.

And I stormed from the room and refused

to give you what you were asking for:

an admission of guilt

goaded out of me with jealousy

poking the bear that slept between us

that held us each in one heavy lidded paw.

vi.

there is no answer

but I think of you now

as I write a poem and now

that everything is broken

and will not be fixed and

yet amid the angles

the jutted body-like bones of broken limbs

the glinting of 

little things.