Where was I that century ago,
That century of touch.
I loved you, ugly thing,
Like a star couched behind
Wild spires of hair,
An unreined cognition,
An inferno of thought.

I hoped you could love me,
That the novelty of touch
Could lull you someplace deeper,
That in the tiny gilded cups of your irises,
Some sentiment was welling,
And that, someday, I'd come washing in.

Your chest on the table,
Its wood frayed by days of rain and earth.
I lived in your pause,
Made a home for myself there,
Took up the sorrow I had fashioned for myself
In that big,  lonely house.

If my love had been a stone,
I would have broken you with it.
How many months after
Did it sit inside of me
Like an anchor
Untethered
At the bottom of the sea