The glass will crack, the glass will shatter,
I tell him … thwack door truly shut,
his thoughts already going before him
down the ivy-walled path towards traffic.
Sounds of his presence: shoe-scuffed gravel,
bag flung down: mind flung wide in all its cupboards.
But when he’s not slamming or pushing to
without the honing will of a handle, he’s always
leaving the door ajar as if in fear of his own absence
from other rooms where voices whisper
some moonlit piece of information which turns the tides.
And how often would I kiss his mouth
for its kindness of not speaking. His hands
for their subtle indiscretions.
Sometimes when he sleeps, I slow my breath
in time with the morse code of his breathing:
the lights and clicks, the dits and dahs: loud now
soft release and intake. Yes, he inhabits the arc
of all momentum and as is the way of love,
reveres the hushed place.