When you go to take him in
embracing with your living limbs,
you will feel a rush of cool. No ice, not rough,
just shadowed quiet: the smooth, dark surface
of a stone. You’ll look into those pond-gray eyes,
dimly reflecting what he sees. Or smell the stale rot
of his breath, swelling in and out of teeth. You’ll listen to
the drained- dry voice. And maybe, fearing all these things,
you’ll pull away to wrestle with each knot that’s tied
between the years, you two. Everything that once
was woven. But maybe, before you are set free, you’ll look
and notice the tattooed years of folded flesh
he wears. They are like a proclamation: “This was me.”
And now he offers what he has: a map of charted courses.
