I was in Georgia

Georgia cold is kind. Two lovers brush its trace off
in moments. We invent things—living a kind of careless

trespassing. We leave ourselves on the mantle, the kitchen floor;
our hair and sweat below the carpet. Each touch turns brief

and permanent. Proficient lovers mess away each other’s
tracks from the sand. Otherwise we leave ourselves

helplessly, in corners, the bottom cabinet, your autograph scribbled
in the color of a fruit that couldn’t grow where I’d been a boy, or in the bind

of a book you never had the time to read. I was visiting Georgia, my lover’s home,
when I heard you’d been found on the roadside in morning, your breath disrupted

by aluminum. Speed makes us vulnerable. Motion begins all
devastation. Touch will take us or leave us holy. We made of the earth

things stronger than our bones. Now we wade in our arrangements,
pray for mercy from our makings. Georgia light gallops through

windows, arriving a sundial to my lover’s thigh. Light knows what it is
to saddle speed save catastrophe. We lay by time, stilled by

wonder, not knowing death. Then a moment betrays
to another. We are clumsy. We are the ones who live in the afterworld. We are

banked on the shoulder, waving down rescue
under sheets. We are the ones who are ghosts.