On our love-making-bed, our sleeping-bed,
you lay lovely, naked, as moonshine

thieves through in slivers, like pick-up-stick
limbs from winter trees. It is cold outside.

There is a meanness to our social application—
the way we cut off people’s necks with a look.

It is January—and COVID. The streetlights
sticking out along and around the curve of

the road jutting up like raised hairs on chillbumps,
glinting into our window. I sit and I look

and I listen as your breasts rise, fall. This
living. I know air scatters all of the micro-dust

and particles all around us. It reminds me
of the only time a parent can sigh, feel secure—

when the baby is asleep, chest rising and
falling, and you watch down on her—dumb

and numb. You wonder . . . is this what God does
all day? Try understanding all those little

difficulties with living. Try understanding
the loud deceit of what makes us move, go on,

and push all that hurt out. It is January. It is
cold in this world, at this time. At this moment,

when you turn over, your breath hesitates,
is interrupted due to readjusting. You pull the

covers over most of your body, legs still
naked, needing. Somehow, you trust me to watch

over your breathing—all over again. I wait
until you regulate and snore out a cacophony

of baby noise. I’m stuck in our finality too.
It is cold in the world, and January hollers.

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