denouement.

i think of you less
and less,
mostly in terms of “was” and “then,” in
that little grey room,
grey walls cement floor
our crumpled clothes and bare skin
the only pause in the monochrome,
i am throwing open the window
to greet the harsh city morning;

replaying on the backs of
open eyelids the way you
counted my ribs, laid your spread fingers
in the spaces
in between, said “look how we fit,
like dovetails,”

and then that slow grin, slow like
dusk settling,
like cold honey,
moving at the speed of the molecules that
form glass (then like none of these, all the same);

sitting with hot coffee
with hotter cigarette,
you know i’d quit but some nights
things just look better
through that cloud of smoke.