Marriage as a Poem Between Two Skeletons

there hang two photos          each a 
skeleton in profile          x-ray arms reaching
for one another but failing 
to touch          blank white wall
           stretching          between their bony
fingers

           and I think
every love poem I’ve ever read was
written           in that space
           
           filaments from body          to body 
meant to draw them 
                     together
like the stitch          and stitch          and pull 
that closes a seam

and I think, maybe that’s marriage: a poem to fill the wall between our outstretched
hands and a promise to pretend the wall is skin and the poem is skin and they join
the hands and the hands will stay that way—the text will not fade and the wall will not crumble

but the skin will          in fact          shrivel and	
           the skin will          in fact          shrink and 
we’ll be          left          just 

bones		 

with nowhere 
           left          to hide the 
selves we’ve hidden from 
each          and          every 
                     other

but I am holding your hand in my hand, still and
all around us things are crumbling and shrinking and
we are unhiding all our secrets in this rubble not
because we are collapsing too but because 
nakedness is a rare and special kind of safety.

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