Smiling through my own memories of painful excitement
your wide eyes stare 
        and narrow like a lost forest of childhood stolen from
        gypsies 
two eyes that are the sunset of 
                                                          two knees 
                                                                             two wrists 
                                                                                               two minds 
and the extended philosophical column, when they conducted
the dialogues 
                   in distant Athens, rests on your two ribbon-wrapped
                   hearts, white 
        credibly agile 
                         flashing 
                                   scimitars of a city-state

where in the innocence of my watching had those ribbons
become entangled 
           dragging me upward into lilac-colored ozone where I
           gasped 
                    and you continued to smile as you dropped the
                    bloody scarf of my life 
                                     from way up there, my neck hurt

                    you were always changing into something else
                    and always will be
                    always plumage, perfection’s broken heart, wings