from while we are among the dregs

And there is a plaster mold of his face, cut into a circle just before the ears, eyes closed, as though emerging from warm bathwater, an elastic strand fastened at each end with a thin aluminum dowel to the edge of the mask. He wears it into town for the farmer's market, and has another identical façade which he uses while making love. One for looking into a mirror. Another for discussing history with friends. Still another for seduction. The masks are indistinguishable, save to him. And he cannot continue without applying the correct one.

Of the two forms of love--potential and loss--we will sometimes consider which is more abiding, and therefore more real.

Into your distances, glancing silences, nervous prevarications, exclamations and subsequent trailings off, I find myself compelled--the folding of space into soft green leaves, woven together as a tunic and placed among the neatly gathered red and yellow sands in the garden, there in the center, and it may only be the illusion of a labyrinth, because I have seen you step with naked feet right across the top of the paths I had carefully formed. But I seem unable to cross, at least in the intense heat of these mid-afternoon encounters.