When this first awful happiness passes, when love

is a sleep and not a thirst,

when each expects the other's daily miracle

and we're no longer finding allegories in the toast

that one burns too long, the other not enough,

then it might be safe to be admired

by the junior gods coming up at parties

to our brilliant routine,

the gods of small temptations like moonlight

in a wine glass or the silver teeth

of a new zipper, an opening

into a voice that says it won't be like the others.

But the gods are all the same, we've learned that

each time we fried eggs in the palace of desire,

ripped the new tape off old boxes, hung our sad, soft clothes

side by side behind another peaceful door.

The gods never get past the first burn

of their ice bodies on each other's tongue,

the tearing that turns them back to flesh.

How they would pull us into their museum,

their arms broken off, reaching to be adored.

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