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Poem
Losing the Light
	by Cheryl Higgins
 UNSUPPORTED CODE  - with a quote
from J.D.
McClatchy's
three-part poem
"Three Dreams of
Elizabeth
Bishop" UNSUPPORTED CODE 

What sold me on the
architect's clever
evening tour
besides designer
lighting and too
many vodka bitters
wasn't this
relentless dawn
scraping every
skylight in 
every room, but
chasing you into
this one
where the moon blued
your foot behind the
big chair
wet, still, from
testing the spa in
your cocktail gown.

When you snatched it
back from the pale
light 
it was then I
thought I could live
here with you, all 
folded against the
west wall and
listening to me 
pretend to lose
interest and read
erotic sonnets aloud
to the moon. 
Or was it finding a
corner of Cassiopia
from your pillow 
unlike any other
from mine?

Did we live in this
place? With this
unsleepable light,
I’m working 
before the paper
even hits the door. 
Through the sliders
on the redwood deck,
a glass, still, 
of ginwater gathers
gnats and acorns
from the last 
one-night stand. My
robe wet on the
rail.
I'm wearing yours.

And why did I want
to hurt you one last
time? 
When you left I said
leave it the robe's
mine, but it wasn't 
not really or why
did I give up my own
to the 
ONS and stalk naked,
moody, after I lost
that 
first slurred slip
of your name 
to the roaring tub.

Your belt trails me
and my coffee. 
The robe's too long
for my tastes.
Alien, familiar, it
slides on my skin
not unlike 
your more wakeful
nights in and out of
my dreams.

And I thought I had
something of yours
after all 
from the pocket, a
letter to me or a
note
declarant or
confessional, either
would do.
What I found was
some acorn caps 
and the architect's
designer card. 
We'd called from a
pay phone that
night. 
I said we'd
forgotten the price.
You said I never
asked.

What we forgot, I
heard a voice
behind me say, was
everything else.
Love will leave us
alone if we let it.

Say the price.

Out on the road,
love winds away in
the dark.
The moon strobes it
through the trees,
the night 
follows its own
unlit way.
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