light through a window

his smile was a type of
camera, and we talked about
the girls in the halls,
and we had scarlet

conversations about how
glazed everyone else was
and how they were the dead

straw of life and how Karen
Carpenter knew how to
make us feel exalted.

we stole books from the
book fair and he became ripe
with guilt and burned them

in a small pile behind his
house to hide the evidence,
i kept mine of course.

parts of our youth were
sulfuric, and we sat in the
pews and passed notes

about going to camp,
would my folks mind?
we can swim at night.

we did not swim at night,
though, because he feared
we'd get caught.

he was studious to the point
of a quivering leaf; i
failed what i hated

and walked the halls
among our peers as
if a sword blade of dusty light.

the triumph was in the
pilgrimage of stars in
our separate infirmities;

how we were of a certain
small tribe of people who
wander against latitudes.

i suspected that his
indifference to the passions
of love was a deep,

meticulously hidden
mask of thieves, and
that what he craved

he could not speak of,
not in our age of dissecting
interrogations.

his truth was a spasm,
really, it was a wrinkle
of sheets and he slept unkindly.

he asked me if i liked
being a father, and i said
yes of course.

he asked me if i liked
being married, and i said
yes of course.

his drowsy questions
were inclined to
disentangle his myths,

i believe; to remove those
walls briefly and peer
though an open window.

i believe he loved me,
but i can't be certain, but
i was never certain with him,

the one who walked the long
way through rows of
suspended shadows and

was never one to share out
the tenderness in the deepest
parts of his tissues.

i should have told him that
i loved him, if only to assure
him that what i valued

was that he was real to me,
that i was not as pleated as
i seemed to be at times.

i took a picture of a window
recently, through which the
last light of the day

yawned, and made the
interiors seem like hope
was not without shadow,

that life was not without
delicate betrayals, that
love was not a feeling.

dreaming souls have it
worst, all leaping urges
left alone to die.

his last escape came
in the night, when no
one could see him.

which is the way he
liked it: obscure
and unassuming.

there is no significance
in things not said between
people, to be honest.

what is spoken is there,
and everything else is a
closed window.

i tell myself that,
but really, it's not
the least bit true.