My friend and I are in love with the same woman.
He says, her kisses open wounds in me
through which you can see all the way to the smoke rising
from those ancient altars, streaming with the wine, milk,
and fresh blood of our earliest rites and ceremonies.
Sacred love has savage roots, he says.
Is that the woman I meet each night, I wonder.
He says, I'm an illuminated book written
in a language I don't know and full of images
difficult to interpret.
In the light of her reading, her eyes waking each letter of me,
her fingers running along each sentence of me,
her voice sounding each phrase, her breath touching each pause
in me, the pictures move, and every syllable
burns bright, ringing to disclose
the grief-stricken paths of wisdom.
All lovers begin in hell and end in knowledge, he says.
Is that true for me, I ask myself.
I wish I could play an instrument.
I'd write a song about her.
I wish I could sing.
I'd sing about her.
I wish I could write a poem.
Every line would be about her.
Instead, I listen to my friend speak
about this woman we both love, and I
think about all the ways she is unlike anything he
says about her and everything else in the world.