Everyone else is in bed, it being, after all,
three in the morning, and you can hear
how quiet the house has become each time
you pause in the conversation you are having
with your close friend to take a bite
of your sandwich. Is it getting the wallpaper
around you in the kitchen up at last
that makes cucumbers and white bread, the only
things you could find to eat, taste so good,
or is it the satisfaction of having discovered
a project that could carry the two of you
into this moment made for nobody else?
Either way, you’re here in the pleasure
of the tongue, which continues after
you’ve finished your sandwich, for now
you are savoring the talk alone—how
by staring at the band of fluorescent light
over the sink or the pattern you hadn’t
noticed in the wallpaper, you can see
where the sentence you’ve started, line
by line, should go. Only love could lead you
to think this way, or to care so little
about how you speak, you end up saying
what you care most about exactly right,
each small allusion growing larger
in the light of your friend’s eye.
And when the light itself grows larger,
it’s not the next day coming through the windows
of that redone kitchen, but you,
changed by your hunger for the words
you listen to and speak, their taste
which you can never get enough of.