The Commander says even if you think
it's God crouching on all fours—shoot him.
You practice entering a building
knowing that in the near future the ruin
will remember the house.

A student studying a great
text, you learn that love is like war
and war a case of amnesia—each an
argument against faith.
And so you turn away
from the open window, the street below
jingling like new money, and a heat that
never subsides, thinking that it would
have been better if you had two lives and
could start over in the next one
strong enough to have your own way.

Like a truck packed with explosives
the Commander says that: what the world
will take it will keep on taking.
A detonator, a timer, a fuse
we deepen into each other, knowing we
have entered that small, accidental

permanent company of one another.