Together. There is lunch and there is dinner, and boxes
    loaded in the car. A few hours of little
said. Sandwiches, both meals.

        We could be any two. This, any parting�except,
        except, except.

        What I want to say is,
        what I want you to hear,
        what is it?

The cat curls in an isosceles plot of sun, unaware.
Tomorrow he will rest in a footwell. A day later,
a different apartment, another town.
            What does it matter to him?

But you will have to finish the chair
        I had meant to reupholster.
It sits bleeding cotton-fill in the den�

    and the bush, the burning bush out the window,
you must dig it up�all summer
         finger-swift beetles have tatted the leaves.
Come winter, it won't survive.

        (You will do this, all, alone. What I want to say is not alone,
        is its opposite. But I want, also, truth.)

I know I would not, for all I love you, have my thumbprint
    whorl into yours, a perfect match. Still I draw back

from our embrace, close my eyes and count
        my many pulses: ankle, abdomen, throat�all saying,
    Systolic: stay.
    Diastolic: just.