Warren Falcon (04/23/52 - xxxx / Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA)

I return to you, a parenthesis in the sea of loneliness.

Each star, each breast, you have removed
in my absence, mourning made permanent,
scars upon your throat oddly fish-shaped.

Astonished, my voice returns, curses, then caresses,
withered left hand free to unravel regret nerve for
nerve, the only net worth mending.

I reserve this one strange act from a year of orthodoxy,

to anoint your feet with tears.

I dry them with my hair, your outstretched arms
a beseeching beyond emptiness, your chest barren
but for my hands remembering the uses of prayer,
kisses but murmurs, rumored stars where swollen sails had been.