Aubade of the Ghost of Loss

Some perilous joy, algorithm of loving,
of conscious geometry of tide and thigh and sand,
delicious salts of ecstasy,
sunlit, triple-mooned, quivering, solid,
this strand of pearl and praise, islets
adrift and melting, chocolate into ocean.

I quiver at our mutual agony, memory.
But you, you killed me, again and again,
fear creating you into what could not companion.
So lost, that room with one bed and three windows,
so lined with blind curtain and Venetians.
There was a time I wanted you or nothing.

Now this echoing re-emergence, so unfair, immaculate
resonant wipe out everything that ever happened.
We worked hard to retrieve forgiven mutuality.
It doesn't mean to work, this quiet mistrust silenced
and obscured. It means to forget, as though moving,
water like a brush on papyrus and wood, on.

Make it never happened. Make it gone. Demon lover,
I cannot let you back into my life. As though nothing.
It's the morning of a midnight just past. Dark, cold,
mysterious with spirits moving across the face of water.
How can you come back, once given and quit,
except to haunt, this night of a morning unasked.