in each place and forever
Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook
of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,
your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb
but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.
Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
epilogue: in each place and forever
They leaned back, two old men, an eagle and a tiger, and waited together.
Erik will not be intercised; he had plans to escape. Charles won’t know this, because he didn’t want to, and he wouldn’t look for it.
Outside the guards and scientists and psychologists were panicking, because Charles was touching Aliyah and Erik was touching Iskierka, and neither man was howling or fighting in pain.
Erik smiled, a flash of old mischief and tired, time-worn affection. His hand was heavy and warm on Iskierka’s back, and he carded through her feathers gently, fondly, remembering all their old patterns and rhythms like he’d never forgotten them.
Aliyah purred in Charles’s lap, head heavy, and her fur was coarse and familiar. Both of his hands were vanishing into her fur, knotted with veins and age, and contentment, like rivers of Dust, thrummed between the four of them, man to daemon and all around again.
Charles felt, in each of these places where they met, the Dust growing and swelling, and he heard memory whisper, and he was old, he was very old, but he was content.
Iskierka leaned into Erik’s hands, and Aliyah into Charles’s, and the two old men waited together, in each place and forever, for someone to come and pull them apart.
They smiled, and waited, and the Dust grew.
