yesterday a perfumed exhalation, a short-skirted prance toward months of sinless sweat and heady whispers of shallow sighs.

today, in twilight, a last measure of cold breath.

a reminder, still, that in bedrooms we effortlessly dispense the reverberations of these unsteady words but allow them to echo only and forever in the backyard chasms we dug and then crossed, once, using our last rickety planks.