I won’t worry about the content of our correspondence
finding you breathing at the edge of every word, and the folds
some characters make near the margins of the page. Truth is,
this past few weeks, I’ve even felt sorrow for Mark Rothko.
Just imagine the repetition of feelings required to finish up
in this obsolete game of me on top of you, you on top of me,
two of us quivering into the half-light of dawn, of dusk,
of a Mozart record at the end of its last song.
It’s Sunday, and de Kooning would be cleaning his studio
from bow to stern today, neglecting to answer any clandestine
doorbell ringing from his models and his girlfriends, just as
when I finally love you, I‘ll give you a shade of red or blue,
a sound to press against the wall of my front door,
beckon me back from sink and floorboards. There’s a final
recorded message there, a last painting, a word and sound, an image
that can no longer be revised, spilled against linen white, a bed,
a canvas, an idea of ourselves that is three inches from the wall,
three inches from the truth, and bathed in perfect
gallery light—open flesh celebrating in the extent of innuendo.
And when I finally love you, I’ll be a series of paintings filling tiles in
on the kitchen floor. I’ll be the pigment in the crevices your hands
can’t reach. You’ll be Saturday night against Sunday morning,
the terrain you can’t return to, the places you’ve never been.