After the argument we lay
warm in our tomb
but motionless
and cold inside, ice cold;
lying close and yet
a pettiness apart.
I was as right as you –
no, even more so.
Sigh. Let some murderous
thought fly out and go
leaving the body limp,
scraped clean and raw.
Ragged resentment, spent
hostility, fog the brain.
In the end, in the end,
what if we did not mend
the rift, heal the tear and
bandage ourselves together?
What’s gained to be right, and all
alone inside the head, the bed;
or wrong, and not saying so?
Your sigh. Were you travelling too,
telling your fingers to stay,
or venture out to mine?
Shall we trade touching then
and sloughing off our armadillo
skins let soft limbs lock,
shutting out the jangling war
behind, beside and lie,
unarmed, surrendering?
My tentative hand seeks your thigh.
My sigh. I no longer care
who wins word-wars.
Too late; you sleep – or seem to –
and I lie, cold-kernel’d
under the eye-lid of the night