Eclipse [poem]

i
So summer leaves turn gold over night.
One falls in love while sleeping.
All the patterns of seduction I could’ve followed
the night of the eclipse;
when I turned to you with the
blossom of my heart
wide-open in my hand.
You could’ve plunged the sharpest blade in me then
and yet I wouldn’t have bled;
I wouldn’t have felt any pain.
I was alive only to the knowledge that I belonged to you.

ii
How does one go about telling the story
of a boy and a girl
without mentioning the smell of rain?
And how to describe the pungent fragrance
that engulfed them both
on a day with no umbrellas,
no raincoats or rubber shoes.
Barefoot they danced in puddles
filling the air with their voices.
How would you describe the smell of rain, he asked her,
and she, peering at him beneath a lock of wet hair
answered,
Rain smells like happiness.

iii
Twenty-four lines without writing down your name.

iv
And what does your name spell out for me?
This sacred alphabet I can’t help but scrawl
on every blank page I find.
Your name, this name handed down to you by kings,
what did your name come to mean for me?
The name I invoked in silence every night,
tracing it out on my skin.

v
I knew you before I knew your name.
We were both rocks in the same stream
caught by the same current
but always drifting in other directions.
We were already written down in each other’s history
before we opened our eyes to the other.
It took an eclipse to make us see.


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