Night after night, talking on the phone, / we give over to a crackling, a circuitry, a crux

We’re sitting idle, another day of no skin, / no face up-turned. It’s not that rain streams us

Remember when you lived by a single quote, / repeated most days / with a fundamentalist zeal, / little need to say more?

In the blue bathroom, my mother’s hidden Kotex. / My pajama crotch smeared with first blurred fire.

I learned a lot from the free museum lecture on the Reformation, / how it wasn’t really Holy or Roman or an Empire at all / when I step back and let the big picture blur. That night / at the trattoria, a stranger with thinning gray wisps