Love

Two keys, a receipt, the shape of your name worn smooth in my pocket.

I said the wrong thing in the right voice. That is the worst way to be wrong.

You left it on the chair the way you leave a sentence, half-said, still warm, expecting me to finish it. I wore it to the market and the vendors called me by your name; I answered, which is another way of finishing it.

The radiator ticks like it has news and keeps it. Frost has written on the pane in a hand I almost read. I choose the blanket over reason, once again. You'd say: get up, the day is not a debt. I'd say: the day can wait, it always has. Outside, a dog reports what it has met. Inside, the kettle rises to its gas. There is a kind of love that stays in bed and calls it thrift. There is a kind that goes to work in the dark. We were both, instead, of neither, which is how the ending shows: the tick, the frost, the dog, the kettle's steam — and you, a warmth I reach for in a dream.