As we fought for the third day, about

something I no longer recall, your voice

turned to water, to a sound I had

never heard, wet and hard and

cold, water from the bursting gut

of a cloud, water from where the air is thin

and icy. I remember your body, laid on the sheets

scented and warm, like a loaf cooling in my hands,

and how at that moment I bent to taste the stew

and how its breath caressed my stunned cheek

like the breath from your body, your mouth:

how I had slowly discovered you

your breasts, your stomach, your thighs,

lying in my bed, night after night

until your disparate continents

joined suddenly into an earth. And so

in that heated kitchen I cooked and pushed out

further and further, rising from the warm surface of the earth

into the chill grain of a sepia world thick

with clouds, rising unheeding until the kitchen became

obscure and I could no longer see

your eyes, your cheeks, your long silver hair, I heard only

the sound of your voice cleaving, turning to black

water. And in that warm kitchen, on the third day

you made yourself into an earth

I could no longer know.