Tell me about love, signs, laughter, the child who walked through the room and out, possessions, like that list you have in the closet, the list that keeps growing and may be a burden or a master stroke of collecting, that child who grew gray at the corner of the door then disappeared, signs like those fires we saw over the mountains last night, the ones that organized themselves into lines, arrows, creasings in the black spaces between the visible stars, beadings, pearlings that might portend dry days to come, laughter like the kind we heard in the adjoining apartment where we also heard weeping and the clatter of billiard balls, the child who began at a crawl, objected to stumbles, then closed her hand around a squirrel tail, which is like love, love of grasping, holding, and releasing, before turning out of sight and we were left with what we could remember possessing together, you and I, lists, boxes, echoes, the feel of our hands growing warmer the nearer they approach. We who love laughter and reasoning out the signs.
