High Noon

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”


Thomas Hardy
Hap

A bird flies overhead and its raven wing throws a shadow across your face; a pattern of maculate geometry, a puzzle I longed to figure out. I put the pieces in my head and find a picture: Memory blurs the edges of what must be, and instead paints another-- what it longs you to be. A picture caught in shifting physics, of light and shade, and its colours running to form another question. You stare at me, mouthing sentences. I stare back and place my mouth firmly against yours, swallowing all your words.