I come home tired and the sun is thick and the air is shining thicker and contractions seem inappropriate, fast like the blood feels through my brain’s constricted vessels

so I am glad you are here waiting for me slowly and we are making it this way our way of opening up, struggling to open up like Casablanca lilies and I swear I can hear time’s brakes squealing and smell my momentum shifting into something to hold on to, actually to hold on to

and then we step outside this little lit up illuminated darkroom

and something out there more than coldness breaks the spell but we largely keep the rhythm, squinting and bundled, our blood now muted semi-quickly coursing but now for frictions more essential seeming more like warming

and I notice thinking we do how out there the air’s different and everything’s abbreviated and punctuated and confabulated into those ubiquitous untidy threes but the sun’s the singular goddamn same and walking as I watch it painting new dimensions on the surely chilly timeless concrete with you beside me I know beyond knowing that it’s time we take it elsewhere and elsewhere is where it’s time for now—

for now I might call that volta but I’d rather say we’ll see.