No chrome without winter,
no New Year, no white baldachin
strung out above the altar, wood
painted white, carved angels singing
for twelve hours straight
in that choir, no hours, no altar,
no slick white glyphs of blades on ice,
stunts of red fireworks, or corrugated heart
projected bright on the screen, no twin votives
by which you held me and said,
I want to feel this way all of the time. No
all of the time. Just brief suspensions,
sharp lung of breath, my blue car swan-diving
through an exit off the highway, like last year,
what scraped off the windshield to the asphalt
was indistinguishable from glass, in its act of shattering,
in the pressure of discernment, of your experience,
the buttons of your shirt I undo
to scatter on the ground; they lodge in the floorboards
like seeds.
