I just learned that the perforation of the mouth
happens at four weeks.
You here beside me, decanting spirits
into your own perforation,
did you know that?
I don’t drink much
but seem somehow to have ordered
a shot of amniotic fluid.
Everything’s a little milky in this strange light.
It’s too dark here to study the obituaries,
we can always do that later, in my bed,
where it’s warmer.
Do you mind my asking
if you might like to come home with me,
when this is over? Or better yet, before then?
I can feel my own mouth opening and closing
like the mouth of a fish,
about to ask what we’re doing here,
what kind of theater is this.
Not the local vet’s office
where just yesterday the surgeon said
my dog had no more lady parts
and handed them over in formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde! What a drink.
Mine too has been a brief fertile cameo,
and maybe yours has, too, a cameo
worth repeating.
Stay with me, won’t you, while the bartender
pours a little more of everything
into the decanter—
eros eros eros
brief, brief