Final Longitude Poem by Deborah DeNicola

There are broken rosaries in my dreams.
We are up to our knees in murky water and the rain
has been poisoned, sallowing our skin with pesticides.
All your life you've been immunized from risk, waiting
for the roof to fall. Listen, it's possible the past will always
carry its cross uphill and the future is just a phantom in an evening dress
seen through stained glass. No doorbell, no mail slot will let her in.

The truth is you have only these small moments fallen in your lap,
swarms of fireflies you've brushed aside without notice.
It is time now to take the measure of their wings. Time to realize
we are blessed with an aria only the two of us can sing. I want us to laugh
and call out each other's names in the wind that never stops
messing up our hair, our clothes. Let's remember flesh

coming together, what it is that humans do mixing their limbs,
how a man dips into a woman in a room lit by touch, and sunlight
shifts through curtains where the pattern is latticed
so even the shadows on the ceiling climb out of their bodies,
above gravity and time. Can't you feel the fear again tonight

on the evening news warning us not to trust the streets.
Not to reach for the healing lotion of another's arms
without some notarized adherence to the rules. Fine print
is full of bars in the jails we are taught to believe in.
I am weary of elusive words and wary
of a world that doesn't want my miracles.

There is a border to the territory
of you, a final longitude
and I am headed there.