My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
 of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
 at the same time. I think

praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
 staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
 is exactly what's happening,

it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
 of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.
 I like the idea of different

theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
 a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
 kind, perhaps in the nook

of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
 anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
 to rest my cheek against,

your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
 My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
 something in the womb

but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
 or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
 she had to scream out.

Here, when I say I never want to be without you,
 somewhere else I am saying
I never want to be without you again. And when I touch you
 in each of the places we meet,

in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
 and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
 in each place and forever.


Anonymous submission.