(after Edward Hirsch)
I

You didn’t know how I hid my head in darkness,

a child in the oak avoiding moonlight.
How I could touch with only closed curtains,

snuffed candle lingering in hair, in breath.
How your skin burnt through my sleep

so I woke all mornings on the boil, a little more
evaporated, a little less, than the day before.


II

My Father hung light all over my Mother

as though she was his hatstand. Across years 
she was blinded to any other image;

my face was his and in her own

she saw only the places he had touched.
On our marriage when you took my chin in your hands

I knew, I could never hate myself so much,

nor love you enough, to become your mirror,
to see myself only through your fingertips.


III

When you played my name back into being

I remembered what it meant to want,
felt the drowning sound of longing

reborn at the back of my throat.
You peeled dark off me like autumn leaves

leaving me bare, blood already blistering,
the thick of you on the tip of my tongue,

Orpheus. Orpheus, the song of you 
in my footsteps, almost enough

to dance me out of shadows. 
Not quite enough to stop me

slipping your name from my lips,
the turn of your head, and the darkness.