his hands would raise the hairs

like marionette strings on the naked nape of your neck

a puppet, a plaything, and then and then

all teeth and bone and sinew

he fell on you, a wizard, a thief

a pirate, a spaceman, a monster

the heroes that swooned you to sleep

then him then hydrogen peroxide

pouring on a wound       breathless now,

your sweet oval mouth sang him arias,

pouring forth like nessum dorma

whispers undo the buttons on your shirt

even you oh princess

in your cold room

watch the stars with

your cobalt blue eyes

the glow within them

a firefly trapped in a jar

if you had touched him then

as he lay beside you, dying

the skin would cauterise even the steepest bleed

but no.  how you both slept beside the night light

and no one will know his name and we must, alas, die

naked and burnt, you dreaming of the gloaming

the coming of the tide

and he, of sugar so sweet to drown the children

the seed, the tilling and the plough

until in the syrup of your beauty

he woke, such terrible victory