Sister Morning Is a Time for Miracles

A core of conversations we never had
lie in the distance     between
your wants and mine
a piece of each navel cord buried
beneath a wall that separates
our sameness     a talisman of birth
hidden at the root
of your mother's spirit     my mother's rage.

Reaching for you with my sad words
between sleeping and waking
what is asked for is often destroyed
by the very words that seek it
like dew in an early morning
dissolving the tongue of salt
as well as its thirst
and I call you secret names
of praise and fire
that sound like your birthright
but are not the names of friend
while you hide from me under 100 excuses
lying like tombstones
between your house and mine.

I could accept any blame I understood.
Picking over the fresh loneliness
of this too-early morning
I find relics of my history
fossilized into a prison
where I learn how to make love forever
better than how to make friends
where you are encased like a half-stoned peach
in the rigid art of your healing
and in case you have ever tried to reach me
and I could not hear you
these words are in place
of the dead air
still between us.

A memorial to the conversations
we won't be having
to revelations we buried still-born
in the refuse of fear and silence
to your remembered eyes
which don't meet mine anymore.

Nothing
is more cruel
than waiting     and hoping
an answer will come.

I never intended to let you slip through my fingers
to ever purchase your interest again
like the desire of a whore
yawning behind her upturned hand
pretending a sigh of pleasure
I have had that, too, already.

When I opened my eyes I thought
we would move
into freer and more open country
where the sun could illuminate our different desires
and fresh air do us honor for who we are
but I have awakened at 4 A.M.
with a ribald joke to tell you
and found I had lost the name of the street
where you hid under an assumed name
and I knew I would have to bleed again
in order to find you

Yet just once     in the possibilities
of this too-early morning
I wanted you
to talk     not as a healer
but as a lonely woman
talking to a friend.