How She Held Him

She held him as if no one else had ever held him.

Which couldn’t have been true, he was too easily affectionate:

he’d surely been enfolded in embracing arms before.

She wore him on her breast as if to nest some large, warm,

breathing ornament: a tender brooch which lay on upon,

approached to kiss, her heart: the wounded word made sadness –

flesh – the only adequate accessory to her despair she’d ever

dared to hope could come to bless her. He had come; she was

no longer numb. They incrementally became so necessary

to each other’s need to care for, and be cared for by, each other

that they didn’t notice when a door closed in their souls:

isolating them against the rest, the test, the agony of life.

They’d closed a door on strife, they thought – never knowing

I dispassionately only had imagined them. They were a verbal

and a visual experiment which now came to an arbitrary end.

Strange to wake up and discover that you’d only ever been

a game of make-believe, pretend – that you never really were.

This first occurred to him, and last to her.

.