Aenalemma

I held on to our skin on skin scent
                   
until it became ionized nitrogen,
until it drifted over dystopian summers
and blue-haloed as a cobalt-sulfate atmosphere

—which I followed well above the continental shelf
     while coiling in tandem with the world’s rotation.

And only then, in starward dead-reckonings,
I could measure the ghost taction of your body

—far as polar-aurorae shieldings
ebbing away from directional dawn light,
                                         
or so I portended distance, a desperate force, desultory;

how I misread it, the mercurial sleeper—
intentionally left blank, all hushed decoherence,
                               all molecular compression.
             
Come home darling.
   
The lanterns on the wharf have been out for too long,
           row after row, fists turned to stone,  
                        clutching at moonburned cinders,
                  lesser sundials beginning to fracture.