The soft palaver of a young couple,
the disturbance of their hands - sounds our skin makes
when touching other skin. Only visible, audible -
separate sentiments, the seen and heard.

Skin against skin requires near silence,
so it can become a simple annoyance.

Also, there is an Indian girl with reticent eyes
like clusters of cinnamon.
When did these girls stop being women?
And my shins begin aching with rain?

Surely there is a threshold, a moment of outside-ness.
Yes, that was it. Something ossified and carried.

The woman who is a girl in my aging eyes coughs,
then later sighs. A soft little sough,
as a birch sapling sags beneath a shower.
Has this become important because I have written it?

No, it is already leaving me, freeing itself
from the narrow canyon of art.

Here, in life, the words are something different.
Amber and scarlet, leaves beyond photosynthesis,
falling like confetti, or like praise.
Forgetting green, which is only memory.

In my poem, the couple has drifted asleep.
The pretty girl gets up and walks away.

I stretch, and there is a twinge in my inner thigh.
This girl hasn’t the slightest idea
what such a pain feels like outside her own skin,
the mysterious sacraments of other bodies.

Unreal things, seen and heard. Ever changing language.
Open space where once there was skin and leaf.