—E.B.H.

We sat talking those long afternoons

in a kitchen, under a ceiling of greenery.

Because you happened to be in the body of a man,

and I, in a woman’s, we made love sometimes,

because it was a way

to say something right,

something written in us

that could only be read

by the light of the other.

Once you put your hands on my head

to heal its aching, for no reason

other than mothering, a gift unheard of in a man.

This was many years ago,

before I understood how

we long, in our passions,

to be observed failing, then saved.

An act of medicine.

The wind blew around that old house,

remember? and snow fell,

but I felt better and better.

It was tropical sometimes,

the lazy rhododendron unfurling

one green leaf, then another.

There rose the gold steams of tea,

there were your fingertips on my temples—

unlike morphine, holding its blue-veined gloves

above the long scarred keyboard—

you exacted it, the pain

that would fail precisely into memory:

the moving leaves, the sun shining

on the text of human suffering,

the difference between disease and symptom,

or symptom and cure, for rubella,

for cholera, for petit mal,

for fôlie à deux

and scrawled on the flyleaf,

your name in bold relief,

Healton, Edward B.