Postscript

What if love’s not well-tooled keys and locks, glass slippers, or mutilated feet?
What if love’s like tracing a silhouette in a peasouper

or like watching Polaroid paper etch itself with shades? In the slow furrow
of the nightshift hours, when workers – returning or leaving –

bruise at the edges, nod themselves back into sleep, love might keep schtum,
might speak in whiskers and bristles, jowls, spiney hair,

an awesome stink. O my godmother: for a woman to play low-stakes poker
with her friends is not, in my view, the least bit shocking.

Neither are these things call for alarm: excessive literature consumption;
making the first move. We have fallen

asleep on the back step, chins in claws, feet tucked snug, while the universe
is bearing down its icy helmet of stars.

He shifts and settles again, cranking out snore and purr, dreaming acetate reels.
How is it September already? I go inside; I leave the kitchen door adrift.