At the rim of the valley a thundercloud breaks open, and lightning flashes. I think of a day in the country, arriving at the home of friends and fishing from their creaky dock by the lake, through late summer rain.
We watched a fish struggle up with the hook and a deep gash of red flowering from the side of its mouth. We let it go, and a plume of smoky brown spilled recklessly in its wake, finally swallowed by the green waters.
When the rain stopped, we shook the water drops from our raincoats and walked without hurry through the town and its shops.
In one of them, a tray held tear boxes no bigger than the tip of my little finger: rimmed with amber and emerald, ornamented with the tiniest of cloisonne flowers and birds.
My love, to hold all the tears you would need to shed in the world, the legend said. I remembered that, as we sat down to supper: crown of pork, cutlets of apple, the musk of tomatoes fallen from the vine.
Before retiring for the night, they passed copitas around, filled with a clear liquid where thin shavings of gold were falling like snow inside a glass globe, like leaf- lets of copper light coating the insides of our
mouths.
I remember this now, the accompaniment of deep spice notes and the taste of ancient, buried metals; the proof of loving that passes through our bodies like blood or wine. How bright yet the sting of tears; how tight the throat filled with ecstatic, invisible syllables. How sweet to burn, and burn
untempered—
for Richard Bach and Alex Rafanan
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