Garret Poem 

Being alive, one must belong to life, 

reside in the world—Why squander the days

in partial reverie? Why hide oneself

from passing strangers? When we embraced

on the floor, I’d be maneuvered halfway 

beneath an upholstered chair—We’d then right 

ourselves, push the furniture away, and  

again it would happen, I’d be gazing 

up at the coffee table’s underneath— 

Pressed flat beneath the heel of desire—

I purchased flowers for the house, lilies, 

world-sharp and opening, the house became 

a coil of lilies—I tried following 

thought there and only arrived at scent, at 

the body’s marvelous precarity,

which I fought like a leashed dog—I wanted 

the lilies’ scent to press against all space 

for air inside me—My sense of them, their scent,

lacked something truthful, something promised 

by the next inhale—But promise never came—

Grace is a narrow interval, a window, not 

a door—There is no passing through—This is the world—

a corner of tangled limbs—Almost humorous

how our lilied evenings began, always

on the landing—She doubted, 

not pressing the doorbell, wearing the far, 

frightened look of prophets, 

as though resisting the fact

of her having brought herself there—I too, 

was doubting, gazed out the rounded window,

before welcoming inside the red change 

that was my annihilation and birth—