His hand rests on her hand,

Too tired to write much more-

Cursive reverts to scrawls in the dust,

to Mesopotamic sand lettering

and mudslide fossils

His lip rests on her ear,

Breath stale like the dusk,

Grey with cigar smoke

She is a cup, his cup-

A chalice not to drink from

But to fill endlessly

Until she overflows onto paper

And chicken-scratch letters

Litter their bedroom

He found her in the classifieds,

A hand for hire.

Trousers loosed, gut out,

Chest hair, nose hair, ear hair

unplucked and unshaven-

he's lucky his ideas are still beautiful

She came for the money

But stayed for the timber

Of his voice.
For the leather of his skin

and his skinbound books

And the way his eyes crinkle

Like paper when he smiles

Someone told her once

You can't fall in love with words.

She laughed so hard her coffee

Came out her nose, burning her.

Such ignorance!
You can fall in love with words

Easier than anything

This she knows,

His hand drum, drumming against her thigh

Asking for time.

He pauses, umms, exhales.

Her fingers stop;

Everything in the room stops.

Then he resumes speaking,

And she resumes writing,

and the dust motes resume dancing

Under the fluorescent lamp

Because the housekeeper

quit the week before

He's telling her a love poem,

Old greek words translated

for younger ears.

She leans back in the wooden chair,

Basking in his soft aura.

A pair of jeans just the right amount

of faded.

Someone told him once you can't

Fall in love with youth;

he agrees

He does not love youth,

Though he appreciates a nice binding.

It's the pages, the fresh ink smell,

the heavy lidded eyes drunk on prose

and questioning everything

from a safe distance,

a heart exploded

ever quietly-

The way her hands create

his words, his worlds-

That is what he loves.

His hand stops her hand

To hold it.

Sometimes even the writer

is at a loss for words.

She obliges, sighing.

Sometimes even the amanuensis

cannot hold a pen