THE CROSSES
There were some afternoons when wearing looks of warmth
she leaned over me, with a fringe grown long enough
to slant forward as her head bent, hiding her face.
My lips felt bruised and my jaws ached from kissing her.
In the gloom her dark shoulders slightly moved, and gleamed.
Beside the bed our clothes lay strewn across the floor.
That happened before the earthquake cracked our city.
The house still trembles slightly in the afternoon.
Evenings have grown cool. We drape the sheet above us
but then we shake it off. In sleep I dream I have
wrapped us both in a warming and soothing blue sheet
but it wrinkles in the dream, and cracks appear in it.
Outside on every house is a green or red cross
like a kiss put at the end of a child’s letter.
Her mouth nuzzling at my cheek, she told me stories
about her doll, and the one about her rabbit
from the years before her father died. In the dusk
the rabbit savoured the freedom of the mown lawn.
So the closeness together of a just a few days quickly
becomes a story. The green cross means I can stay
and continue my life the way it was, before
the solid earth shook itself beneath the table.
If not, I dare not venture in, for what we had
might open and widen until I fell right through.
