Quietly we have watched each other
with the intelligence of oxen. The light

in this room bare upon us, bared. Deep
inside me time is moving. Let us come

without clamour to be sanctified, against
histories and blank bodies and reasonable

expectations. Let us come. Nothing
to be explained away. Kindness must be

the last to go. All else we have carried
can be abandoned with vigour. Thus

we are forgiven; the past is a collapsed
tunnel. Let us kneel on this mattress. Let us

renounce with our hands the refusal
of adoration. Confession without

repentance. Flinching from the cutting rim.
With my mouth and yours let us forgo

old fictions of the immutable self.
Dithering addictions. Performance

without surrender and heaving hungers
making prey. In the scant wet air let us

renounce dowries and contracts doused
in shame of nakedness and the murk

of unspecified fear. Darling between us
let’s renounce joyless obligation,

spending mercy like coins, overripe
grief rotting and carceral. Renounce

all the walls in your head
in my heart everything.

It is simple enough now to say
No I don’t know. Yes I want. Yes

yes I really do want. Despite. Because.
Yes.