Three Weeks After

by John Sibley Williams

Still there’s milk.  In our eyes.  Dampening your shirt.
The moon’s mouth is not wide enough to consume it all
and the sun is mostly teeth.  Spillage.  Always a few drops
leak through.  Most mornings, that is enough
to remind us the smaller gods of bone and blood
are the briefest.  What we named it persists long after
the object.  It’s like talking underwater.  How our lips oval
around a word everyone knows but no one can hear.
I’m exactly this broken.

Your shirts are washed and stiffen on the line.
A moment of wind transforms them to ghosts.
All thrashing together and apart.  Bodies losing track
of limb.  He is not here to see the distance between us
waver from horizon to taste.  When I can taste you,
when you taste of milk, I say we are dancing.  Sometimes
this has all been like trying to dance underwater.