She tips her age into his yawning hands, tracing the mother tide.

Her eyes are bites, and with her smile, her smash of glass in a feral air,

she leaps forward:

            “Name me in your heart.”

 

His shoulders sigh, fanning twilight thin, and stretch in the arch

of a velvet coat, and with a voice of milk and ice, he complies;

            “You leap into me like a greying river.”

 

Her throat cuts out into the night, wounding the porcelain,

and, with her lonely study probing the sand, reaching for a curtain

to clothe, she tilts her cheek childish once more:

            “Name me in your heart?”

 

He sweeps her feet and tastes the walk, and shirks the woe

wide, and with a voice like crystals drowning, he beguiles:

            “Your heart is in my heart.”

 

She, satisfied, drags the comb down once more, and wills the years blind.

 

Her dust is a kiss and a beauty

in the knowing pull of the tide.