Over oatmeal and "butter" tubs I watch you turn
following the play of sun across your forehead,
the photons' slow drip into the loose ring of your collar.
The kettle comes to a boil, you glance up,
and the edge of the spoon is sharp, suddenly,
against the roof of my mouth.
I become conscious of the metal,
cheap, gummed with oats and saliva,
the hard click of it on teeth.
Sometimes when you lean at certain angles against our doorframes,
I feel myself a linen thread against the thin ease of your chest.
We fight about my leg cramps
and the onrushing demise of the global economy,
about the comparative merits of sliced bread.
I want to touch your arm
just above the elbow, where it's smooth.
I want to lick the corner of your nervous lower lip.
I like best the nights when you stay up banging on your laptop keys,
breathing hard, your toes staticking the dark.
Their sock-swathed softness as they twiddle,
restless, nearly drowns the discordance of your belief in God
with the perfect width of your too-tightly trousered hips.
Silence dips and shifts between the keyboard's plastic ratatats
and pools hot in your fists as you break to chop carrots,
leaving them to cool beside the day's potato shreds.
You drop the knife. I doze.
The fury of this silence stands firm and frictional against my back
with the barky permanence of trees.
