As We Are by Melissa Chappell

In your silent texts

your graveled voice

causes me to slip,

skinning my words,

now stinging,

bloodied, quiet,

and remembering

when there were

no words.

Just us, in our

underworld of

sleep, each having

forgotten the other’s

presence, having settled

beneath the dust of

Eden’s bowers,

quiet, as before our beginning,

yet still, as after our end.

Until

there is some stirring,

a light, sage as 

a point of brilliance

at creation.

The waking is slow.

Is it some dream that

your still slumbering 

frame is here? Adam,

asleep in the dust,

the sharp contours

of your body dispelling

the illusion of a dream.

I am waking, slow.

The sage light pulls me,

rising, a stirring 

marigold, an orchid,

tender, every sense awake. 

It is Spring in 

Winter, and you are 

restless in rising,

but your fingers

find the butterfly,

and the fluttering air 

will

not lay quiet.

The tenebrous

darkness

did not bind us.

Only grasp the light,

as we wake,

as we are.