The ritual begins when liquid linen
fabric meets a water-warmed body,
and our game of play-pretend commences
alone or with another in the dark.
Arrange yourself and then stop. Do not think
of the day, the dishwasher, the broken keyboard,
the dust flying nervous
off the ceiling fan — fleeing the indifferent voyeur
to a softer nest than metal. Do not think as
you practice in private — a tiny, innocuous death. But
the mind is quick and chitters in the vacuum, rejecting it:
filling it with a slightly spurious face. Yours?
You are five again. You are already eighty.
The Real forms itself, regurgitating
memory and fantasy without distinction,
when a hair brushes
off your calf, or a beetle
roams. Breaks the stoic ruse.
Grant the pests their superposition.
Remember the rules of our game.
