To leave you is like waking, or refusing to wake,
in that way the body has of haunting itself.

Returned to your hand, I'm an astronomer
unable to lower my telescope, or look away.
You are the telescope, too. Close, you show me
far reaches that are themselves not even the beginning.

Not to have left you is life in an alarm,
the unstraightened bed interrupted and warm.
But I always bring bright souvenirs from our travels,
a feather, a coin, a bee, astonishing in my palm.

Minutes past your touch, what our bodies were
is disappearing like a ship caught in polar ice,
covered up, compressed into deep. To leave you
is where the icicles fall, and the fog we wake to.