The Universe is Expanding: III

We’re sitting on a beach,
and I’m staring into the fire,
the heat is blistering my cheeks.
She’s leaning back and watching the sparks join the stars
as they burst from the wood in dry snaps.
Waves collapse onto the beach,
limp and weary from their journey,
and a pair of motorcycles roar to life,
their thunder tumbling down the sea wall
and dispersing into the bay.

We’re burning wood we found by the parking lot,
all salt-stained white and gnarled,
and we’re sitting in the smoke, blown on a wind off the water,
to keep the flies away.
We brought wine, but the bugs got in it,
and the low tide reeks like a corpse.
I remember the Cape is dying.

She doesn’t talk like she used to,
and I try not to interrupt her thoughts
with tidbits of quantum physics
that I’ve gleaned from my book.
She used to talk, then she used to
run her fingers through my hair
as she listened with an air of interest,
and now she just idly strokes the back of my hand
if I lay it close enough to her.

I dreamed that we were laying just inches apart
but couldn’t touch
as our bodies stretched away into light.
But we stopped telling each other our dreams,
and I believe that’s for the best
because I never have been able to lie
to her.

We don’t argue anymore, and I know
what’s happening–
I’m not stupid,
just in love
with an idea of someone.

So she watches the stars now,
and I watch her now,
taking in her curves all aglow
in the pulse of firelight.
I try to mark this moment,
try to make the smell of smoke,
the rustle of wind,
the murmur of waves,
the sight of fire reflected in her eyes
indelible to me.

But I’ve been here before,
in a thousand hours we’ve been apart,
and all I ever really recall
is the burning of my cheeks.
I could move further from the fire,
but it will just die down soon
anyway.