If such a thing as perfection were said
to have been found, it wouldn’t be
in this singular moment that can’t ever change
just before this profoundly naked woman
opens her eyes to a light that’s never been
named or articulated in any way,
not with the most avid mixing of pigments
in any century. The light this woman
would see, waking, if she ever could,
in fact, wake, would be the light you believe
flooded the sparsely-furnished apartment
in Over-the-Rhine as you watched a woman sleep
you had touched naked for the first time
only hours before. You couldn’t breathe
for that moment in that light you remember
thinking was letting you see everything
as if for the first time, & you started
naming everything haloed by that light
as if you were Adam & the garden was
bathed in a light you couldn’t help thinking,
in that moment, was articulating the woman
you had realized was no woman asleep
but your lover, a word you believed meant
something it had never meant before. It was
winter. Snow had fallen all night. The morning
cold & hushed, you heard the ticking of
the oven in the next room & thought of how
you’d left its door open to heat the apartment,
the furnace having given up the ghost
weeks before. Nesting raccoons rustled
in the attic. Every sound was muffled,
as though the snow had made even sound
question its motives, or leave town to find
the perfect ears of the lover who had left
what must have been centuries before. Time
wasn’t even a word in what light did
to the body of the woman still asleep
in your bed, the sheets a scraggly aura
around her you thought was elation. If
you’d done more than that quick pencil sketch,
if you had taken the time to paint her, say,
in oils, not acrylics, she’d still be
asleep in your bed, the blue-white morning
light without a thought of letting her go.
