December 29, 2015

where the warmth is

The floor is an obstacle course of spent wrapping. The couch, a tangle
of tired limbs. The coffee doesn't revive. Wine doesn't blur the edges.
We think we've tipped the limit of our offerings, and while the effort could have
rendered us pliant and soft-hearted, we are, instead, crafting an armature of separate,
quiet desires, imagining highways we might have traveled had we not spotted
this one, crucial detour. And yet when escape bats her long, dramatic eyelashes,
we do not follow. The window where she points her gaze opens only to a wall. 
So we fold our bodies further into this room, where the warmth is, say
"I'm not leaving you" in the various ways that animals talk to each other, 
as the wilderness spreads before us, its scatter of gifts right under our feet.