hibernate an ongoing ache in intimately ground chambers, measure
grief in seasons, wintered beds find the sum of every year carried over,
then subtracted in eager homecomings, the previous year’s obsession
reduced to memory by a quick, pointed romance, the blush
of manic movement: love and a newly multiplied reason for existence—
every May they rise to the challenge, collapse once more in sweet
palmed-longing, a summer crush of pink and white lives turned,
the heart upside down, the center of each swollen self, fallen.
