like rainbowed oil on the pavement.

I was twenty. In a few weeks I would fall,

for the first time, in love, that man waiting

patiently in my future like a red leaf

on the sidewalk, the kind of beauty

that asks to be noticed. How was I to know

it would begin this way: every cell of my body

burning with a dangerous beauty, the air around me

a nimbus of light that would carry me

through the days, how when he found me,

weeks later, he would find me like that

an ordinary woman who could rise

in flame, all he would have to do

is come close and touch me.

The Thief

What is it when your man sits on the floor

in sweatpants, his latest project

set out in front of him like a small world, maps

and photographs, diagrams and plans, everything

he hopes to build, invent or create,

and you believe in him as you always have,

even after the failures, even more now

as you set your coffee down

and move toward him, to where he sits

oblivious of you, concentrating

in a square of sun —

you step over the rulers and blue graph-paper

to squat behind him, and he barely notices,

though you’re still in your robe

which falls open a little as you reach

around his chest, feel for the pink

wheel of each nipple, the slow beat

of his heart, your ear pressed to his back

to listen — and you are torn,

not wanting to interrupt his work

but unable to keep your fingers

from dipping into the ditch in his pants,

torn again with tenderness

for the way his flesh grows unwillingly

toward your curved palm, toward the light,

as if you had planted it, this sweet root,

your mouth already an echo of its shape —

you slip your tongue into his ear

and he hears you, calling him away

from his work, the angled lines of his thoughts,

into the shapeless place you are bound

to take him, over bridges of bone, beyond

borders of skin, climbing over him

into the world of the body, its labyrinth

of ladders and stairs — and you love him

like the first time you loved him,

with equal measures of expectancy

and fear and awe, taking him with you

into the soft geometry of the flesh, the earth

before its sidewalks and cities,

its glistening spires,

stealing him back from the world he loves

into this other world he cannot build without you.

Landrum’s Diner, Reno

We slouch, half-asleep on Christmas Day,

in a domed metal diner with seven red stools.

Three lone men drink coffee, glass shakers

of salt, pepper and sugar between them,

a pyramid of creamers. A young family

orders breakfast. They taste

from each other’s plates as the sun

leaks through the windows, spilling onto

their heads, their hands, like butter.

After seven years, we have begun

to love each other, to trust