Wake
You were wide asleep. The streets
of your aching imagination
were filled with passengers, with the
quickstep of dreamers,
with the real shuffle of feet.
You flicked through the faint
pages, turned the thin tissue
for obliterated faces. Your fingers
skidded or thumbed
through packs of lost lovers,
caressing this one, or discarding
another with true caprice.
You were searching, I think, for me,
and the abandon
possessed you in desperation.
I was lying, face upwards
beside you, when you turned up
one for the books, the road.
I heard you scrawling
my name in the index,
touching what troubled you
with the heels of your hands,
hard. You wrote our names
in swift italics
on my mouth. I was fast awake.