The world outside this room is buzzing
with fireflies and summer, and a thousand problems
hover in the heat outside our window.
I’m not listening tonight.
I’m locked in this soap bubble some nebula blew
that somehow sealed around us, mirrored and shifting.
We’re safe here. For now, until the rainbows turn silver,
and time’s up. I hold you, lying still—
not wanting it to burst.
All I want
is here, right now:
you and me, face to face—
parallel lines meeting
just long enough to touch.
The skin holding you in
with its dark hair like forest growth,
hiding me from the eyes of night.
Your fingers, soft like new ferns,
curling around mine.
Your eyes, black stillpoints
gazing behind the splayed grass
of your hair-strands—black, turning silver too.
We blink like cats, locked in—
floating on the current of stopped time.
I can’t hold on forever. Boats drift.
I’m feeling the weight of gravity
and equations of singularities
that were always too pure
for this world.
Someday we’ll have to say goodbye.
Someday, one of us will be the first to die
and the earth will swallow our story
and feed it to the ocean creatures
as the waves crash on and on.
Someday I’ll have to leave this room
and venture into the heat of the day.
Maybe I’ll mistake the silver shimmer on the road
for the water I once knew, and run toward it.
But tonight, I just want to stay here
watching you watch me—
feeling your breath rise and fall,
carving your touch in my veins.
© Psyche Marks 2018