I

I read somewhere that every love
has its own government. Or was it
that every love has
the government it deserves?
What is ours?
The heat of August is thick,
an unwoven blanket of air,
damp, present and persistent.
Here, we two representatives
half-sleep some place half-known,
remembered only
in moments of utter distraction,
but never in despair.
Before we depart, gain again
our former lives, we might
for the sake of transition
gaze a few moments
at the adjacent apartment house at dusk,
each window a single friendly frame
of others nearly like us, caught
in a life carried on
without the negotiations of duplicity.
We take up the habit
of referring to others
in the third person once-removed,
while for us there’s only
the everlasting present: we walk out