Poem

For a Very Brief Time

For a very brief time, A. & E. were like
a diphthong, sitting side by side on the
bench outside the meditation center
meeting secretly at odd times and places
7:13pm in front of the library
2:32pm on the cliff overlooking the Pacific.

A. wrote poems for E. and sent them on
kitschy postcards. E. was introduced to A.’s
son; A. met E.’s former spouse.

For a very brief time their pulses synchronized
and the rest of the world retreated — like a
chorus line moving upstage — leaving just
the two of them alone in the floodlights.

Then one night, they stood together
on a street corner and got so close that
for a split second each of them disappeared
vanishing like binary stars in a death spiral.

E. was frightened by this. And so they agreed
to unhook their limbs and let the gravitational
vortex fling them to opposite ends of the story
no longer singular, but plural once again —
each in her own discrete orbit.