Orbits

one night, i dreamed the moon was made of ice

and the sun was made of fire. don’t move too close!

cried the moon, and this was how she stayed alive, floating

like a crystal ball through the pitch-black firmament of night.

but then, like the moon, the dream turned to water

and melted back into the dark with all the others.

   .

the quiet pull of your sigh

is stronger than the gravity of my restraint

but we keep orbiting, we keep still.

across the bench you disappear

into yourself, knees tucked against

the deep navy of your turtleneck,

and we look at each other.

there, frozen in the pale countenance

of your face, i see the future—

our bodies moving through darkness,

colliding. why can’t we stop this

puppet tragedy of circular motion?

when you turn away, your face wanes to

crescent in the gentle haze of the porch light.

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.