Strange now, to think of you
amidst this aftermath of scattered atoms and queer cells,
this apocalypse, the collision of bone and skin,
all gnashing and trembling and brimming with heat
left over from the creation of our aching, leaking universe.

Strange to remember those clarion eyes and fishgut teeth
and tongue curled up around cherry blossoms and beatnik poetry;
it seems, somehow, significant
that I still carry on my lips the shape and timbre of your smile,
each particle of warmth and aftertaste,
another furtive hope, another offering to absolution.

There was some hesitation
even in the last glows of these days
we spent in the laps of Sartre and Moses,
and while you dreamt of children with teeth like mine and eyes like yours,
I contemplated the vacuum between molecular bodies
and the heat death of the cosmos