Symbiotic

Wet as a blue eye, bare branches hung with pearls of dew.
It is the melting season and we are in the muscles
of each other`s hands, yours cold and dry,
with hastily painted blue nails (from a party where you didn`t sleep
and next morning I carried you from the car, light as a book;
as full of words to tell me).

We have addicted ourselves to the night;
these walks in boots or running shoes, streetlights in their blurring rows.
We furnish the neighborhood with guinea pigs and penguins,
locomotives and grandfather clocks.
We have named the mountains of the moon.

Tonight the street is a cathedral of light. The slush is moon-colored.
The air calls in drips pitched on asphalt, mud, slate walkways.
We hypothesize the contents of hot dogs, jello, cheesepuffs,
and I teach you about symbiosis, like a song that needs a dance
or a family that cannot sleep with closed doors.

You ask me if it`s like a noise that`s only scary in the dark.
You ask if it`s the same as a painting in a museum.
You ask me if the baby stays inside after it is dead.
You ask me if her name is still Maya. You ask me
if the earth or sun moves.