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.
From Where Now. Copyright © 2017 by Laura Kasischke. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyon.org.