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"Greeting a Lover in Apt. 42" 

Hello, darling.
Outside, it's raining, but here inside 
This small dark room 
Full of your scent
Full of your living shadows
It is warm and dry. 
Come here and stay
For as long as you can,
Because outside, it's lonely.
The rain will tell you the 
Same thing. 

How lonely the rain is,
How lonely this small dark room
That creaks in the wind with only your own ghosts
To occupy it, and old bullet holes,
And occasionally a woman's perfume
Light and impersonal and loving
Will waft through it, and add a new shade,
But this does not happen very often.

How hard it is, your reds not reds, 
Your greens not greens, and even your sight is different,
And all of these silences layer themselves
Across your eyes until there is only whiteness,
And I am lonely. 
The world is composed of people looking away.
Always away. Odd animal, 
Giraffe among ponies, 
Awkward even now, voice and hands and eyes,
And even her small hand upon your shoulder,
Gripped firmly, is not enough, 

Her island and your island only 
Isolating one another even more. 
How wide the sea, how unending.
Let this bed be our island.
Let these white walls be our borders,
And let us ignore the rest of the world, 
And the rain, for a while.

I will be your first mate, your keeper,
Blind as you are, 
And every thought you think I will believe,
And every fear you feel I will alleviate, 
And every sadness you confess I will hold in for you,
And every gladness you possess I will keep for you,
Nothing shocked, nothing disgusted,

Because in all people there is a vast
Emptiness that cries like a lonely gull 
To the emptiness in others, 
"Love me", "Love me", 
"Accept that I am a ragged vessel",
And I will love your holes,
And I will love your shadows,
And I will love your erratic thunder
And your sleepless three AMs, 
The way you butter your bread like no sane man does,
The way you think left when everyone else thinks right,
The way all people fear they are all keys where there should be locks,
I will love all of it, the silences and the 
Other times, when life is hard,
There is no quota you can fill

There is no place I will not follow you,
Into the rain, which will fall, 
But will not matter, 
If you allow us to be one another's shelter,
Islands touching briefly in the sea
That is the rain falling on nothing,
Into nothing, out from nothing,
The silence that is between the atoms
Our longings breathing and merging,
Not lonely,
In this bed,
Hello, darling,
Between the silences I will follow you,
And in this small dark room
The rain will not catch up to us. 

**********