On watching an artwork 14 years on

Your porch – quarantine space deemed safe – 

feet between us like miles

like years

Put it out there

you said of the work I hazarded as 

Perfect

then quickly backpedaled to 

It was all it could be.

And I listened – like I do –

and then watched

horrified and bewitched at the creation that long ago

had eaten and burned all of my green bits.

Is all love like that?

Eruptions from our deepest veins

cooled to plutonic bruises,

whispering beneath their hardness

they can never be safe friends.