Between Dead-stop Coffee and your cancer scare we dodge the rain ducking into your apartment. Your hair smells of lavender and money. I smile, trying to hide my fear of your power, but the care you take with small things disarms me: thank yous, second cousins, the single candle by your bed. You unclasp your bra and I come undone. Unbuttoning my shirt, you confess to thinking you’d never have a lover again. Unwilling to be as vulnerable, I lean back and take you in. Your voice, so vital, I fantasize the two of us together long ago, but you remind me that without our exes and grown children we’d never have gotten lost in the same place. Naked, you reach deep into me and pull out a dark bird I didn’t know was there. With your eyes you ask my permission to release it. I watch you watch it out of sight.
Late Mercies
Image © Callie Hirsch. All Rights Reserved. 
