The February issue-

This was how I sought MacLaughlin,
positioning myself in window light,
letting him watch,
pulling slowly along the rifts inside.

I stretched along the months,
reaching for the part I thought was him,
past the wheatened and Rolling Rock,
the pre-dawn rowing on the lake,
when his arms would pull and part the surface of Cayuga.

Across a coffee table is the worst way,
but somehow when his lips
and mine
pressed and parted, tongued and moved,
there was an epiphanic saying:
"This, here, now, this is"
and I was blind when he touched my skin.
I tried to bring about
the rush and glory of his smile,
and leave his divided longing in our wake.
This was not his passage.

MacLaughlin was engaged in the Spring.

In October he lamented at a bar,
with his legs touching mine,
and his breath coated with division,
that there were so many choices,
doubled passages gone wrong.
I pressed a bottle in my hand,
feeling liquid inside glass,
wanting only to close my eyes.
Instead, I watched him,
touched his shoulder,
felt the tearing of my rift.

In his sight I felt all
the sunlight in my hair.



GLS
3/12/91