Leaning Over Eros Poem by Jennifer Reeser

She recognizes him at last as Other,
not Self. I see her in my mind, hot wax
about to plummet from the lifted candle.
Should closeness be so vulnerable to fact?

The wrinkles in her gown â€" a troubling grayness
amid chaste white â€" I see as always moved
by some upended breeze against their terrace;
his face I see as turned, not wholly proved,

his faith in her confirmed in that he sleeps.
She scorches one long finger on the flame.
It all takes place unerringly and fluid
as Psyche's first defeat of Cupid's aim.

And you are...somewhere. Never mind my grief.
It springs from sources better left unseen,
when in this life, I scour my own gray wrinkles
between our nights. But they will not come clean.