Remember sleep, in May, in the afternoon, like
a girl’s bright feet slipped into dark, new boots.

Or sleep in one another’s arms at 10 o’clock
on a Saturday in June?—that

smiling child hiding behind
the heavy curtain of a photo booth.

All our daysleep, my love, remember sleep

like brides in violets. Sleep
like sleepy pilots casting

the shadows of their silver jets
onto the silver sailboats
they also sailed
on oceans miles below.

Such nothingness, on the other

side of which
infinity slid
into eternity, insisting

that we had lived together forever—and did.

Like the human brain, which organizes
The swirls and shades of the bathroom tiles
Into faces, faces
With expressions
Of exhaustion, of disdain. The
Virgin Mary in the toast of course
But also the penance in the pain, and the way
My mother invented
Plums and tissue paper, while
My father invented the type of
Sudden kindness
That takes you by surprise
When you’ve expected to be chastised
And makes you cry