Hare

I wanted the cold of you.

December

[The kitchen window. In it: amber eye, blue eye. One hare. One woman in a nightgown again; silk against her legs and fur at the edge of thought. Behind both: six hours of dark, turning into seven.]

You are two hundred miles west, lifting a camera at Fanad Head, at the Atlantic flinging its grey. Stamping black boots over marram grass, as gulls rock the day under.

I’d say I wish you were here but you’d ruin my panoramic.

Once: your hands going into the tangle of my hair and I went

heavy. The dip of the warm pillow under us. I wanted the cold of you –

the cold that has been travelling over open water for three days.

A mouthful of salt. A mouthful of fur. The hare’s ears pin back, a hazel streak, then a gap between.

Your palms on the back of my head.

Two hundred miles west the camera comes up empty.

My head sinks against the glass. Silk pooling around me. December air through the gap at the window. The cold I’d wanted –

it arrives.

Finds the place I left unguarded. The heart lifts and lets it in.

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