Abstract Constellations
To pass the time
As you sleep
I count the freckles under your eye
The bristles of your beard.
Seven. Thousands of thousands.
Years from now,
If someone else
Gently sleeps beside me,
Will I still seek
That abstract constellation
Shadowed by lashes?
Still expect to start
At the roughness of beard
In the soft curve of shoulderblade
That you once claimed?
(Explanatory Note: I'm now ecstatically engaged to someone not the subject of this poem...I recently stumbled upon this for the first time in six years, and while I remember writing it I can't remember the intensity of feelings that prompted it.)
