Borrowed light alone can’t make out
this house I’ve never filled.
With your hands blinding me
I can finally see through your eyes.
Windowsills froth with baby’s
breaths rearranged like a chain
of events in hindsight. Generations
of weathers have vined down
the outer wall as a candle loses light.
We lose life in unknowable increments.
How to account for this gravitation.
This longing to leave oneself behind.
A winter ago, a fisherman wanted you
to hold his hand while taking
last year’s haul from the tide. He looks
so sad even now we cannot tell his age.
Closer, I’ll say. For the night
in your eye is a shade colder.
How in this dark can we ever tell
where the perimeter of being starts.