This is the part I wanted to replay over and over until made
to stop: his body falling away
 
like some trick shot, a dissolve into a scene I could deconstruct
until it was no longer pivotal, only the slow
 
dénouement of a figure moving out of view.
I wanted to watch until the window is no longer
 
a window but a cut from an alternate ending, in which
he is dancing: alone in the yard after a party and all the guests
 
have all gone home.  Some unusual soft-shoe
to Daphnis & Chloé, stereo like neon illuminating the gray evening
 
and him, dancing a marvelous circle around the mulberry
like Fred, doffing berries off of his Sox cap.  How he relates
 
to the old lawn chairs, his disaffect, until he lifts them one by one
and carries them into the shed like the broken
 
lovers they’ve become.
To be able to watch until the window shifts toward
 
another season, in which it is snowing, in which we might
build a fire and draw a circle around each other
 
for safety.  Our forms, latched together and present, a room
somewhere, a tall building, his body wrenching
 
into mine like a stutter.  I’ve conjured the room.
In it, I’ve placed blankets, a bed, his side
 
of the bed and mine next to it, the window overlooking
a street below, traffic paused for a moment, the snow
 
coming down almost pathologically and we would not notice,
would see only the flakes suspended, balletic.
 
I’ve been unreasonable, I know I have.  I’ve rehearsed
a dialogue to arrive in the ideal place and not
 
where it has appeared, on a delay, as subtitles, poor
translations of another mind’s intent, the scenes shortened
 
and out of sequence, the order unimagined
and true.  I’ve pictured him turning back, to come upon me
 
like Ravel after a fistfight, reveling, the distance
I perceive in his body now my own distance from it, controllable,
 
an hour before morning, his face so near I am unable to focus
so I close my eyes.  It’s that simple, really it is.  Here
 
I am plotting the circle, the fire, a desire
to catalogue together the snowflakes as they collide in miniature
 
white explosions across the screen, the traffic below us,
the exhaust, the city
 
all palsy and burn, here his body still
and still next to mine, not falling, not going anywhere.