So frequently a sound of wind interrupts the part
where I should be gone from the scene. I want you
to imagine a ledge, then the stampede, the country
western where a buffalo calf lies felled, its small
teeth you could hide inside your pockets for so long.
This is what I remember: you opened a fire by packing
the kindling in your hand, taking me with your other.
Beans boiled. I wanted it to be real dirt beneath me.
There is a privacy in tomorrow I can’t stand.
I wanted to write you a love poem, horses pounding
dust into a scent fit for memory, their twitching haunches,
the black flies whirring like a drunk’s empty tears.
There should have been a sky darkening onto you
like a kingdom, the sun half-thought to be extinct
by the time you remember it there. A horizon line
cut into, there’d have been stars. Why did you believe me.