Métis

[Half One]

We happened upon a mutual presence through our well-timed sufferings, fell into it like divers into bottomless pools, black and glassy with kept promises of absolution.

There were tears, and there was commiseration, and for hours and hours the sadness felt a little more human.

Desire coupled with suffering, suffering with desire, and he was there, curling into every part that mattered: nestling there, cradling, pulling me to him-- and he to me.

The hours were slow: breezes and their chimes promising to us Spring, rebirth.

Light spilled in through your windows.

And we sunk to the floor, molting from our clothes, and sweet
and sweet
and sweet

and O! how I needed you then;
how I love you now.

...

[Half Two]

I am not sure what "half" means in this case,
though you've told me the story of how your people got their name.
I think of the relation of halves to wholes,
and how halfness is often just a lie.

I think of the wholeness of every experience I've shared with you:
from the communication of love and needing
amongst errant notes of treebound chimes
and the chosen notes of an artist whose feisty trill I will never forget,

to cupping your face in my hands:
chilled by the black and glassy waters I so often mistake for the sea
(our waists and every thing beneath disappearing):
your pseudo-tonic-clonic response to the onslaught of heatstealing
at the most-tender union of eustachian and jaw.

I so loved you that night; I so ached.
You were a vision.

I wanted to cradle you like a child,
pure and precious and infinite:
to fold You into Me, to meld our worries,

fold ache into ache into the oblivion in which we stood: suffused with love and wonderment-- cold-infused bones, animal cravings.

I feel nothing but Boundlessness in you.
Your tears are kisses of purity, delicate
and absolving, filled with the suffering that is existence.
Your kisses on my neck are the pitter-patter of rain; I feel touched by something cleansing-- and pure--
from on high.

You are of this Earth. You know of Heaven,
and awaken in others
(in me, inside my Self)
that same knowledge interred.

You are always Here.
You move forward, you
will always be moving forward--

something Earthen, and something of Heaven.